Best Damn Agency Podcast

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Managing salespeople can be a challenge. With so many different sales methods, it can be hard to keep track of how your team is doing. That's why in this episode, we’re walking you through how to hold your entire sales team accountable, sales experimentation, and tonality versus scripting.

This Cast Covers:

Does Joey feel the pressure of getting old on his birthday? (01:23)
What it was like podcasting and bunking up in an actual hurricane (02:55)
Saying things to clients that you immediately regret (06:06)
JJ’s recent misunderstanding with a client and how it was resolved (06:40)
What prompted Joey to have the entire sales department team meeting (10:30)
The emotional Levers Joey built into that meeting and the outcome that resulted from that(15:18)
Using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) for negotiations, sales, and meetings (16:08)
Things to optimize for in the entire sales operation, such as comp structure (17:40)
One of the biggest challenges agency owners face when it comes to managing salespeople (18:42)
How to know whether your sales rep is doing a great job or slacking off (19:53)
When was the last time you actually held your sales rep accountable? (21:22)
Sales experimentation - what does that mean? (22:25)
What happens when your agency gets rolled up (26:31)
Joe lays the groundwork for sales experimentation (29:03)
The art of getting the money from a book called The Narrow (30:24)
Sales experimentation is an ongoing moving target of selling(33:37)
Building a sales function for your company is almost like teaching a toddler to swing a baseball bat (37:04)
We are experimenting for our clients (43:32)
If Joey had to choose between tonality versus scripting, which one is more mission-critical? (46:02)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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When you sell a productized service, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out how to effectively communicate the story behind it. It's tempting to tailor your messaging to the strengths of your offer, but doing so risks alienating both your outbound and inbound target prospects. This episode will look at how you can put your productized service on the front foot by developing a compelling message that offers a unique value.

What’s in Joey’s and JJ’s glasses: Presidente - Beer from the Dominican Republic 5%

This Cast Covers:

How we’re feeling during a potential hurricane in the Dominican Republic (02:19)
Joey and JJ recall going through extreme weather situations in their respective childhood (03:41)
How Joey and his wife handle hard decisions in the family (05:29)
Decision-making in the Russell household (07:22)
Why Joey believes there always should be a very distinct captain of the ship in any agency or company (08:47)
What are both Joey and JJ bringing to the mastermind this time around that's different than what they brought to the mastermind a year and a half ago (10:50)
How the Best Damn Agency Mastermind members have also evolved and created a legit brotherhood of agency CEOs (13:29)
If you're going to build a sales team, should you just stick with your validated offer with validated demand or create a new lower-ticket offer for your new sales hire to sell? (15:23)
Some principles Joey thinks through when crafting an offer consolidating all the basket of goods you’re going to sell (18:06)
What Joey means when he talks about a productized service (20:32)
How using analogies when selling and talking about delivery can make a world of difference (24:45)
Why JJ hates when clients call their foot-in-the-door offer an “audit” (26:04)
it's just all about positioning and how you frame that foot-in-the-door offer (29:33)
Green flags that can validate you’ve made the right hire in your sales team (30:00)
What Joey and JJ are most excited to get out of this mastermind retreat (35:50)
Leaning into the relational aspects of the trip (37:38)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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One thing’s for certain in this business: If you're scaling your agency to success, there are going to be a lot of tough moments. It starts with the lack of resources and staffing, but it doesn’t end there. Scaling an agency is hard on so many levels, from dealing with difficult people to the lack of a clear direction. Pour yourself a tall glass because, in this episode, Joey and JJ spill the beans on what to expect when scaling your agency, how to write good sales copy, how to find the right people, and the real-life application of building a great culture in your company.

What’s in Joey’s glass: E.H. Taylor Single Barrel and Manik Black Edition Extra Añejo

What's in JJ's glass: Blade and Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

Prepping for our trip to the Dominican Republic (06:05)
The actual meaning of the phrase “burn the ships” and why it’s so important to Joey (07:00)
If you need somebody to write sales copy that converts for you, then you probably need to investigate Sales Driven Agency (13:02)
A certain roadmap every agency owner’s probably gonna need that’s in the works and will be launched pretty soon (16:15)
Why sales copy is vastly different from sales copy and what makes good, high-converting sales copy (20:38)
How a cold email shouldn’t read like a marketing email and what to put on the subject line to get them to open and read your email (23:44)
Why the “unprofessional-sounding” emails get more opens and conversions (27:26)
Should partners be compensated or paid a commission for deals they sold? (29:00)
Is a highly-skilled, sales-focused partner more valuable and deserves more equity than the other partners? (30:00)
The biggest lesson Joey learned in scaling up and growing a company (33:22)
Doing weekly shoutouts to the people who embody the five core values of the company (34:54)
Are your company’s core values actually detracting you from sales success? (39:24)
Whoever backfills Joey as the VP of sales really has to bring it because they’ll have their work cut out for them (43:29)
Relinquishing control is something Joey’s learning in scaling the company (44:37)
The most fun Joey and JJ’s done recently (47:42)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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At Sales Driven Agency, we coach your salespeople to sell, but one of the most valuable things for coaching is shadowing a sales trainer, the previous salesperson, and sometimes you as the founder. Now we know you didn’t start your agency with a background in selling (unless it was out of necessity or unless you were Joey) and that’s okay. Because in this episode, we teach your salespeople what to look out for when shadowing a salesperson who sucks at selling… even if that salesperson is you.

What’s in Joey’s glass: E.H. Taylor Single Barrel

This Cast Covers:

How Joey lost 22 lbs in 3 weeks (02:05)
A few people affirm our decision to keep the SOTR segment on this podcast (09:54)
Can you still learn from shadowing a shitty salesperson/founder-based seller? (12:08)
Shadowing a salesperson/founder vs. training or learning a ton of content (14:53)
How long should you let your salesperson shadow you on calls before you let them run their own outreach (17:47)
The one thing Joey wished he had SDA’s new account executive do during training (20:59)
How to identify the role players versus the elevators in the company and who to take with you when you run multiple businesses (23:26)
Joey’s take on never hiring role players, only players that have a massive ceiling and a leadership potential (31:08)
JJ wrestles with the idea that some people who seem to have a lot seem unhappy while others who barely have anything seem joyful and carefree (38:46)
Why we have to make time for gratitude (41:07)
Both Joey and JJ share their moments of expressing gratitude and contentment (43:15)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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In this podcast, Joey and JJ make a case for questioning everything, consistency, measuring sales-related activities, and how to turn a gatekeeper on a cold call into an advocate for you. Also, what makes an effective sales manager? This might be helpful if you, as a founder, need to step into this role or hire someone new for the role.

This Cast Covers:

Joey’s and JJ’s ultimate hope for you listening to this podcast (01:51)
Why we need to do a better job of questioning everything (05:58)
Something we all wrestle through in some way, shape, or form (07:52)
What made JJ almost want to quit his job (12:02)
Can friends work together? (13:13)
An ever-present tension of sales pushing the boundaries of delivery or vice versa (13:41)
The good thing about Joey and JJ’s working partnership (15:05)
Listen to Joey’s terrible ad reads for Sales Driven Agency (17:26)
Where to start assessing or diagnosing a company’s existing outbound sales ops (20:53)
Which data to look at and questions to ask yourself when you don’t see the results you want out of your sales operation (24:08)
Should you pivot away from the phone when gatekeepers are involved or come up with a tactic for getting past them? (26:47)
Joey shares a strategy and script to use when cold calling to get past the gatekeeper (27:00)
How to call in the gatekeeper and make them an advocate (27:53)
Other strategies you can do when cold calling itself doesn’t work (29:43)
Identifying gaps in your sales reps’ abilities to perform and strategically provide training for filling them (33:08)
How to be an effective sales manager especially if this is not your strong forte (34:58)
The difference between meetings and reviews and why you need both as a sales manager, leader or coach (35:38)
How Joey’s feeling about their current trajectory as an agency of growth and scaling (42:56)
JJ’s reflections on building massive businesses but also being an excellent family man (47:41)
What to do when you realize you’ve lost sight of your “nuclear core” convictions (48:42)
Why Joey isn’t a big believer in work-life balance, rather on running from one of the spectrum and back (21:24)
Our goal every day shouldn’t be energy preservation, rather an energy depletion (23:43)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Got an offer that just isn't converting as well as you'd like? You know that it's missing something but can't figure out what it is? In this episode, Joey breaks down his process of crafting solid offers, how to build out your sales campaigns whether that’s through phone, email, or social, why you should build a sales team first before creating your marketing engine, and the best way to leverage leads.

This Cast Covers:

We’re starting a cool thing at our agency called SDA Happy Hour (01:39)
All the things you need to answer before building out sales campaigns for clients (02:51)
How JJ realized he’s old as shit and why Joey thinks he’s a loser right now (03:53)
JJ shares a quick anecdote about his kid’s football game which prompts Joey to share his 12-year-old football anecdote as well (06:27)
Is it normal to have significant anxiety ever in business and what can you do about it? (11:14)
The ODD system to lighten your load if you’ve got too much on your plate (13:37)
Ever heard of the entrepreneur’s or the founder’s curse? JJ breaks it down (14:21)
Why joining the Best Damn Agency Mastermind will be the best decision you’ll ever make as an agency owner or founder (17:10)
Joey’s process when it comes to crafting offers from start to finish (20:54)
Learning about your superpowers and doing more of them rather than putting things on your plate that you aren’t necessarily great at (24:41)
How to combat that feeling of “comfortability” newly hired salespeople may get because of having higher base pay (28:16)
Are there people still willing to be in a setup with lower base pay but with massive commissions? (30:41)
Why it’s so important to hire somebody with the right makeup and mentality and aligns with your agency’s core values (32:04)
How many contacts should you drop into a sales sequence-building campaign? (34:15)
Why Joey prefers the phone for cold outreach and needs to see 500 dials before saying that a script is working (35:58)
What to do with the rest of the people in the first sales campaign that didn’t convert (36:41)
If you need more clarity around building out sales campaigns, then you’ll love working with Sales Driven Agency (11:16)
The best way to leverage lead magnets and what to do with warm leads (44:46)
What Joey finds the most ideal model in terms of lead generation, marketing and sales (45:47)
The most effective initial point of sale if you’re doing cold outreach (49:59)
Sell something that gets a very specific outcome, price it accordingly and learn how to upsell afterward (52:05)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Pricing is all about value. The more you give, the more you win. This is a very simple concept, yet it is not as easy as it sounds. In today's digital age, it can be easy to fall into the trap of trying to be everything to everybody. It's important to remember that by setting boundaries and charging accordingly, can help you create a stronger brand and a stronger business. This Sales on the Rocks episode is here to tell you why you don’t need a million and one offers to reach your revenue goals, how scarcity works in sales and why it is so damn effective as well as how to properly execute the scarcity tactic with your business and the first few things you should be tracking and monitoring after hiring a salesperson.

What’s in JJ’s glass: Parker’s Heritage Collection | Heaven Hill Distillery

This Cast Covers:

JJ went on a wine-tasting tour that used a reverse psychology scarcity tactic on them (03:28)
Is this scarcity tactic something that you can also spin in B2B sales or more for D2C only? (06:01)
Joey exposes Bugatti for incorporating the scarcity tactic really well in their sales (07:27)
Stuff we said we’d never do but are now doing (12:19)
The most advantageous way to package your services and why less is more is always the way to go (17:05)
A problem JJ keeps noticing with the clients they work with wherein they can’t or won’t execute the sales management training we’ve given them (21:54)
Why founders and business owners either overlook the sales accountability tools we give them despite training and coaching them on how to use them (23:24)
A solution Joey proposes that’s honestly the most basic and non-negotiable activity you need to do if you want to fix this issue (24:17)
Joey and JJ workshop through how to train salespeople using a phased on-ramp and what trainers should be looking for from one phase to the next (26:17)
Activities Joey would love to see sales reps doing in the first couple of weeks of their training (27:40)
Why it’s important to not only track activities but also focus on measuring the outcomes of those activities, such as the number of FTAs booked (28:54)
This same kind of measuring and tracking activities and outcomes of sales reps can also be used in our timeline with clients (31:33)
Defining the win at different stages in the engagement is a mappable application (31:53)
Joey and JJ go into a semi-deliberation between two candidates who are gunning for the closer role at SDA (36:23)
If we both had to make a decision today, who would we pick from the two (45:46)
Why JJ actually liked trying to sell the role to the candidate because it feels like the candidate has the upper hand (47:04)
Joey puts JJ on the spot with this question: What's it like making as much money as you're making now? (50:27)
Generosity is a great metric of mastery over money (20:59)
Joey’s core focuses or thoughts around generosity (23:10)
Having a purpose for your money (25:41)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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In this short episode, Joey Gilkey shares with the listeners a massive announcement and change to the Best Damn Agency Podcast.

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Sit back, unwind, and grab your favorite liquor while you listen to another unscripted, unfiltered, no-BS conversation about agency ownership, life, and agency sales. In this episode, we specifically talk about why owning your shit is our number one core value, how to eliminate victim mentality from your organization, the best questions to ask in an interview for a sales closer role, why you should prioritize sales first before operations, the elements that make a successful email campaign, and so much more.

What's in Joey's glass: Willet Family Estate Bottled Rye

This Cast Covers:

The downside of not being an EOS-driven operational machine (01:04)
How extreme ownership plays out in sales (05:48)
What to do when there is a massive disparity between the quantitative and qualitative rating someone gives of their performance (06:12)
What are sales reps expected to do as it pertains to ownership and how to spot the lack of it (08:44)
Always look at the numbers because numbers don’t lie (08:53)
Why owning your shit is the number one core value in our company (11:13)
A real-life example of someone who really embodied owning their shit (13:19)
Why doing the opposite (blaming anything and everything but yourself) is cancer (14:18)
The 90-5-5 framework’s number one ingredient is an attitude of ownership (15:13)
At the end of the day, you have to want to change (16:51)
Why empathy-based selling works (18:03)
JJ’s new favorite interview question that he asked in one of his calls (22:06)
What Joey does intentionally when someone gets far enough in an interview process (25:10)
Why following up is so crucial, especially in sales (26:29)
Ever tried to bribe a professor with liquor? JJ has a crazy story about it (31:27)
The ironic thing about hiring intrapreneurs (35:49)
What to prioritize first: operations or sales? (41:07)
Finally getting to “The Tactical 10” bit of the episode (45:02)
Troubleshooting cold emails by working in conditional logic (49:42)
How to get past gatekeepers or work with them during a cold call (56:33)
Joey’s unique $500/hour thing that he should be spending time on and one or two things that detract his time and energy from that (31:49)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Serving you unscripted conversations, Joey and JJ are back on Sales on The Rocks to tackle becoming effective leaders in sales from being good to an elite and world-dominating salesperson. In this episode, we will also gain insights about hiring candidates and setting specific target earnings. Joey also shares some helpful tips when building or renovating a house.

What’s in JJ’s glass: Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

JJ’s energy is fake! Here’s why (2:15)
JJ shares his experience of buying a brand new car (3:59)
Losing virginity at the age of 15 is an underwhelming feeling for Joey (10:20)
Getting used to a thing you were excited about or growing old pretty quick causes an underwhelming feeling (11:03)
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind is the number one community for agencies (12:09)
Get to know Napoleon Hill who wrote the book Think and Grow Rich (12:32)
Experience in the space is what makes it hard to compete with Joey (15:47)
Being a ‘’Thermostat’’ that accepts feedback indicates a good leader (18:28)
JJ tells how fun the buzz was last week at SDA (19:38)
Joey gives back the credit to his team (20:25)
Mastering the cold email turned into a silver bullet to giving up early on tactics (21:52)
Never skimp on talent when building/renovating a house (26:56)
JJ talks about the effectiveness of hiring the best candidates at an executive level (31:10)
Learn the difference between a good salesperson and an elite salesperson (33:00)
Sales Driven Agency solves problems of agency owners who are not salespeople (35:10)
A deep dive at the works in the Sales Driven Agency (36:00)
Setting specific target earnings for a salesperson in times of product and pricing evolution (38:35)
A situation when it is best to change the structure (40:40)
Creating new offers means increasing margins (41:30)
Learn the most mission-critical among the G.W.C model of EOS (46:00)
Cold Call or Cold Email? Find out Joey’s choice (48:06)
Selling high tickets outdoor over selling low tickets as an inside sales representative (49:40)
If not the CEO, what job does Joey like to take in (52:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Jacques Spitzer is the CEO and Founder of the San Diego-based full-service branding and advertising firm Raindrop. Over the past decade, Raindrop has helped more than six direct-to-consumer brands grow by millions in just months and are responsible for creating the top-performing ad of 2020 on Youtube. Among their clients include WORX, Omigo, Crossrope, HoneyBug, the Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes, Dr. Squatch, BakBlade, T.S. Restaurants, Ruggable, and The San Diego Symphony.

He is also the author of the book People Love Turkey Sandwiches and co-author of the book Think Better, a sought-after speaker, documentary filmmaker, and 2-time Emmy-winning storyteller and creative director. His work has been featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine.

In this podcast, Jacques shares how he’s leading at least 100 employees for his two different companies combined, the importance of an entrepreneurial operating system, what his day-to-day looks like nowadays, and what most ad agencies get wrong about creating video content.

This Cast Covers:

How Raindrop walks the talk by doing their own marketing for their agency (05:38)
Creating a long-form ad that led to an insane number of leads for almost zero ad spend (10:21)
Why Joey is an idiot for not leveraging this type of content in their outbound process that could easily cut their cost per acquisition by half (11:17)
There is never a wrong moment or time to invest in yourself (11:48)
Jacques shares his insights on creating edutainment content (13:09)
What makes Raindrop unique from other advertising agencies creating video content for their clients (14:08)
Don’t start with what you want to say, start with what your consumer wants to hear (16:14)
What has changed for Jacques and Raindrop in the past 12 to 18 months since being on the podcast (17:52)
How implementing EOS radically transformed Sales Driven Agency as well (19:39)
Having an EOS has led to so much clarity and profitability (22:11)
“Think Better” by Jacques Spitzer and Jeffrey Campbell (23:06)
Jacques shares one of the parables in the book about overemphasizing the role we play in other people’s lives (25:21)
Joey recalls a life-changing moment when he realized he was just a rock in someone else’s play (25:52)
Is it true that any PR is good PR? (29:05)
What does Jacques’s day-to-day now look like? (32:30)
Jacques shares his upcoming podcast launching really soon called Marketing People Love (34:55)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Raindrop Agency
Jacques Spitzer | LinkedIn

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Joey and JJ are on track again in their unfiltered conversation in this week’s episode of Sales On The Rocks. Tune in as they discuss the balancing of optimization for conversion and overdeliver in the sales process. Joey unravels his secrets of becoming world-class at sales. They also share inspiring tips about unwiring negativities. Plus, heartfelt insight about what the Best Damn Agency has created.

What’s in JJ’s glass: Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

The athletic accomplishment that Joey is proud of (4:10)
JJ tells a story of his car being caught on fire (07:21)
Attention, likability, and credibility in a nutshell (12:09)
A teaser of Joey’s book for agencies (13:28)
Find out what Joey thought about the third season of “Stranger Things’’ (16:35)
Underselling too much hurts profitability and revenue (19:56)
The client’s success could be at risk in overselling (20:05)
How to balance undersell vs. overdeliver (20:38)
Creating good clients can shrink your Total Addressable Market (TAM) (21:42)
Learn about the Harmonic Triangle of Mike Blasco (22:54)
The people’s feedback on the BDA’s delivery side (27:01)
Joey’s spectacular skills make him world-class at sales (29:23)
College is stupid and a degree doesn’t matter (31:08)
Find out if Joey always had a high standard for success (32:45)
Thinking about what’s worth for the future than settling for less helps Joey to become a master at sales (35:30)
Metrics for accountability or scoreboards that help set sales goals (37:01)
To sharpen one another as a family is what The Best Damn Agency has created (40:21)
Best Damn Agency also helps people to lead a more holistic life (41:08)
The value of outputs over inputs in sales (43:49)
What bothers Joey’s leadership capabilities (46:21)
Learn about this 15 minutes TEDx Talk of Michael Neill that answers the question: Why aren’t we awesomer? (51:40)
Joey on changing wirings to be focused on the positive than negative perceptions in life (53:49)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Jason Smith owns an agency called Spotlight Social Media Consulting, a Facebook and Instagram ads agency helping brands and businesses 10X their growth and scale through a winning ads formula. Prior to that, Smith worked as a Los Angeles police officer for 13 years. Currently, he lives in Colorado with his wife and children. "Perpetual Traffic", a podcast produced by Digital Marketer, chronicles Smith's departure from the police force. Aside from building high-converting Facebook and Instagram campaigns, Jason enjoys wakeboarding, wake surfing, and dirt biking.

In this episode, Jason recounts his past career as a Los Angeles police officer, how it’s shaped his view on humanity, wealth building, relationships, and the takeaways that led him to be a successful seven to eight-figure revenue agency owner.

This Cast Covers:

Who is Jason Smith and what does Spotlight Social do? (03:15)
Why Jason turned down some pretty sizable opportunities such as 7-figure single company deals (04:48)
The unique path Jason took in becoming an agency owner (07:00)
His background as a gang officer In Los Angeles and why LA is probably the most violent city in the nation (08:13)
Did his 14-year experience as a police officer have any negative ramifications on his view on people and humanity (12:14)
Part of his job as a gang officer was to make sure he knew every single gang member, their families, and their lifestyles (17:56)
Policemen think they're stuck in a job for 25-30 years when that’s not really the case (19:02)
How he ended up running an agency after a long career in the police field (20:10)
His fears about leaving the police force and the relational toll it took working nonstop everyday (25:18)
Jason’s big takeaways about transitioning from police officer to agency owner and how that impacted his life positively (29:32)
Navigating through current IoS 14 changes and how it’s created both headaches and opportunities for Spotlight Social (35:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Spotlight Social Advertising
Jason Smith | LinkedIn

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In this episode of the Sales On the Rocks, Joey does the Cold Call Role Play with co-host JJ. You’ll learn the first thing to do when making a cold call and also gain insights about how to work while having a chill lifestyle apart from knowing how to become an effective salesperson and manager. The podcast also discusses plans after retirement – Will you still work for passion?

What’s in Joey’s glass: Zero Sugar Monster Energy drink

What’s in JJ’s glass: Rabbit Hill

This Cast Covers:

Different kinds of tones to sound optimistic and annoying (02:21)
Joey’s tips on how not to become the person you hate (06:52)
Meet Eliud Kipchoge, the first person in history to run a 26-mile marathon in under 2 hours (08:33)
Work is not punishment but should be balanced with chilling (13:01)
Why do some people hate their job? (16:30)
Joey and JJ roleplay cold-calling, where Joey offers SEO to JJ, a dentist owning multiple clinics (20:20)
The number one thing you need to do first in a cold call (28:29)
The best thing about cold call roleplay (29:39)
The effective use of self-deprecation in a cold call (30:43)
“No competition positioning statement” works incredibly in the attention of potential clients in cold calls (32:29)
Best Damn Agency Mastermind has another goal apart from bringing people a bigger picture of becoming CEO (35:37)
JJ addresses criticisms about the Best Damn Agency Mastermind (37:26)
What Joey is looking for in hiring a sales coach (40:45)
Different the roles of a sales coach and sales managers (40:50)
The challenges of bringing a sales coach rather than a Senior salesperson to potential clients ( 44:45)
Will Joey continue to work? (49:09)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Samir ElKamouny is the Founder and CEO of Fetch & Funnel, a growth marketing agency purpose-built to connect growing brands with their ideal customers. They specialize in customer acquisition via influence marketing, growth hacking, digital marketing, sales funnels, and conversion rate optimization. Samir has run successful campaigns for some of the world’s largest brands to raise millions on Kickstarter for creators with innovative ideas. Samir is also the host of the Ecom Growth Leaders Podcast, a featured thought leader, and keynote speaker.

Digital marketing aside, his obsessions include biking, taking his car to the track, traveling, spending time outdoors, & looking for his next adventure.

This Cast Covers:

What it’s like to have a digital nomadic lifestyle like Samir and why it’s not for everyone (03:24)
Samir talks about how Fetch and Funnel came to exist (06:54)
Is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising feasible for agencies to do profitably? (08:47)
What the first couple of months of the agency were like – Samir and his partner Matt (cofounder of Fetch & Funnel) worked closely together in person before actually running the business entirely remote (10:36)
What he would do differently knowing what Samir knows now (12:24)
What Samir is most excited about building for the agency moving forward (16:45)
What it takes to be a healthy agency (18:10)
Which of the five P's their agency is working on the most and will make the most impact in the next couple of months (20:02)
Where can the agency contribute to its hiring success: intuition or having a refined hiring process? (22:01)
The one thing Samir has done since day one with every single hire no matter what the position is (23:00)
Joey simplifies the 95-5-90 rule in hiring for agency owners to implement (24:34)
Why you should have a very rigorous hiring process (28:56)
One thing most agency owners don’t do that could hurt your profitability (31:40)
What Joey and Samir are looking forward to in the next mastermind anti-retreat (38:12)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Samir ElKamouny | LinkedIn
Fetch & Funnel | Website

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In this new episode of Sales on The Rocks, we will tackle recession, how to address it, how people should act towards it, the value of tact in winning deals in the sales pipeline, and discover the secret behind taking ownership through sales training. Moreover, we will also have more profound insights about The Sales Driven Agency and Best Damn Agency Mastermind.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Athletic Greens

What’s in JJ’s glass: Coffee

This Cast Covers:

One thing you learn when you’re fat: You are always on a diet (1:7)
Recessions are somewhat manufactured (6:15)
The chain effect if people get scared of recession in the economy (7:00)
We are all creatures of habit in psychology (8:40)
Find out what one-percenters do in a recession (9:24)
Joey highlights the importance of buying in a time of recession (10:40)
Discover how a person from earning nothing became worth over $100 million (11:47)
Recessions are where most people will make their fortunes on the back end. (13:01)
Do not accumulate debts (13:51)
Here’s how Joey as a CEO instills ownership (16:06)
Learn the importance of tact in being a challenger (18:53)
The secret of winning deals in the sales pipeline (23:51)
The value of timing and consistency in winning deals (27:05)
What Joey wants to change with his clients (46:15)
JJ cannot stand how resistant clients are to the hiring process. Here’s why (48:02)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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CrowdSouth is a digital marketing agency that specializes in social media, search engine marketing, and web design. They serve clients from California to South Florida, and their office is in Kentucky. The name CrowdSouth was born from their passion for helping businesses connect with their "crowd," and their home base here in the "south."

Jason Heflin and Chad Webb, co-owners of CrowdSouth, spent the first 8 years of their careers in corporate sales – managing multi-million dollar marketing budgets, high-stakes projects, and technical teams.

In this episode, Jason and Chad share their experiences as co-owners of CrowdSouth, what it’s like to split everything 50/50 as partners, their valuable takeaways from being part of Best Damn Agency Mastermind, their initial thoughts about raising prices, and the leaps and bounds in their business after implementing this difficult call.

This Cast Covers:

Chad and Jason talk about how they decided to become 50-50 business partners at CrowdSouth (02:45)
The two most crucial things to having a successful partnership that both Chad and Jason definitely possess (05:22)
How Jason and Chad were like as 12-year-old kids and what they thought they would be growing up (07:01)
Who earns more: an astronaut or an account manager at Sales Driven Agency? (08:32)
The final straw that led Chad and Jason to leave their previous company and go build their own damn thing (09:27)
How Jason approached Chad to become his business partner and the birth of CrowdSouth (12:03)
What changed in the last 12 to 18 months after Joey challenged them to increase their prices (14:06)
Why investing in your own growth as an owner and investing in your agency is the best business decision you’ll ever make (15:26)
What most owners often forget while running their agency (17:04)
Joey emphasizes taking care of the captain first (18:13)
The inevitable wrestle between having a lifestyle business and having a full-blown company building towards an enterprise (19:14)
How Jason and Chad reach an agreement about landing on a direction for their agency specifically (21:00)
Being partners of a company means allowing the other person to excel in the areas they are already great and successful in and having fun while doing it (24:21)
Why it’s a must to raise your prices and stop undercharging for your services (25:03)
Opportunities for growth at CrowdSouth that Chad and Jason might not be currently excelling in and how they’re tackling them (31:28)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
CrowdSouth | Website
CrowdSouth | LinkedIn

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Joey and JJ are back at it again with a #nofilter discussion with booze on the rocks to cap off the week! They discuss and touch on topics ranging from strategizing, the most effective ways to model scaling your team, tips on stability, backtracking the 90-5-5 principle, and more. The Sales on the Rocks podcast megaphones the hard-truths agency owners should hear.

This Cast Covers:

Joey shares his theory on “The Slippery Slope of Artificial Intelligence Learning” (6:40)
Will robots have a future as alternative pleasure satisfiers? (11:33)
The 5 bucket investment strategy: learn how you should allocate your hard work onto different brackets (17:10)
Effective internal structuring methods you need to do to help attract external win-wins (20:09)
Joey defines his contentment and happiness in his current career setup. Get to know what Joey’s proven and tested business scale model is (24:23)
JJ and Joey run down the 90-5-5 principle on employee roundups
The difference between leading and managing (27:45)
Joey and JJ share their thoughts on Top Gun: Maverick (33:03)
Of consciousness and intuitive thinking: Joey highlights one of Top Gun: Maverick’s greatest lessons (34:33)
How to bounce back from client cuts (39:43)
Learn the power of networking (41:22)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Justin Rowe is the Founder and CMO of Impactable, a B2B LinkedIn Ads Agency. Justin became the #1 Linkedin expert on the world’s largest RFP site and officially launched LinkNLearn which would eventually become Impactable. LinkNLearn exploded into a full-blown agency and expanded its offerings to include Linkedin Paid Ads.

His original company, Linknlearn, was acquired in 2021 after serving more than 1,000 clients in 30+ countries. They’ve worked with over 1,573 B2B Brands in 30+ Countries including everything from scrappy startups to billion-dollar tech unicorns.

In this episode, we’ll be talking about LinkedIn Ads. As you know, LinkedIn Ads is a lead generation platform that allows you to advertise to an already established online audience. It’s an insanely powerful tool for agencies, as well as businesses that are just starting out. We’ll be covering attribution, the costs associated with it, and why we don't use it, as well as some hot tips on running ads in your account today.

This Cast Covers:

Who is Justin Rowe, what is Impactable, and how did his agency become essentially a funded startup? (01:00)
Why LinkedIn ads gets a pretty bad rep but is still one of the most reliable in terms of getting quality leads and more closed deals (06:15)
What makes LinkedIn ads a superpower (09:09)
Justin gives away the type of ads you should be running now if you want to try LinkedIn ads (11:32)
How Justin tackles the nightmare of attribution in their own marketing and advertising efforts for Impactable (15:07)
The proven way to lower your cost per acquisition that most agency owners don’t like to admit (17:04)
What makes Justin mildly frustrated about big agency owners who care way too much about attribution (18:17)
The acceptable cost per acquisition for an agency and an important metric you should be tracking if you’re running LinkedIn ads (22:00)
How what was supposed to be just a curiosity Justin was exploring turned into the acquisition of Impactable (26:48)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Justin Rowe | LinkedIn
Impactable
Impactable | YouTube

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The pandemic brought about the beauty of working from home. How it could be more convenient, money-saving, and more familial bonding as some of the pros of the digital workspace setup. In this episode, we talk about one of its cons, on the other hand, namely the loss of more heated healthy competitions. JJ and Joey discuss if it is possible to recreate this kind of culture in the new norm of remote working.

This Cast Covers:

How effective are business/life coaches? JJ shares his success story with a life coach and with him as a business coach himself (2:39)
The 95, 5, 90 principle: the one concept you should look at to brew your colleagues’ motivation towards greatness! (7:00)
Let’s talk about the R word: recession. What should agencies focus on to avoid going through recessions? (21:12)
JJ and Joey talk about when you should know that it’s time pivot and abandon your ship (24:38)
Physical workplace culture tends to be more highly competitive than work-from-home setups. JJ and Joey tackle what an agency could do to mimic a competitive culture digitally (27:54)
Want to establish healthy competition in your team? Check out KPI tracking. (35:04)
“The rule of thumb is you should have no client for about 10% of your total revenue.” Here’s why (38:39)
Client concentration = a big no no. Redirect your focus on this instead (41:43)
Have contract-dependent clients? Joey shares his thoughts on clients like this and how he manages them (49:41)
Things get personal: JJ asks Joey, “what are the things that when your margins get thin get squeezed out first?” 55:37

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Today's episode is going to be more of a ramble than an interview, but I think you'll find it just as insightful and helpful. Today's topic: the Recession.

If you've been listening to the show for a while now, you know that I don't shy away from controversial topics nor ask you to follow other people's BS advice. That's why in this solo episode, I'm dropping my real, unfiltered, no-BS thoughts about the Big R. Whether you believe there is one coming or not, there’s no better time than a recession to go hard on offense and stop living in fear like everyone else. Find out how you can prepare for the Big R so it doesn’t impact your business as hard as you think.

This Cast Covers:

How most business and agency owners shoot themselves in the foot when gearing up for a recession (01:40)
What a recession really is and why you don’t have to be afraid of it (2:10)
Why having a “let’s go on defense and weather the storm” attitude is actually working against you and the economy (02:39)
Steps you need to take between now and when the big R hits that will have you making gains more than losses (04:20)
The one who takes ownership maintains control and takes power (05:20)
How to come out as a winner during the recession and why I get excited when the hard times come (07:46)
Get your ship in order, take care of your ship (10:09)
The best way to invest in stability and growth right now (11:12)
Why you shouldn’t give a sh*t about what everyone else is doing and mind your own business (13:19)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Scott Scully is the Founder and CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a B2B lead generation company and business growth agency. For the last 12 years, they have offered multi-channel marketing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to grow through outbound lead generation, marketing services, and Salesforce consulting.

Eric Watkins started at Abstrakt Marketing Group in 2012 as an Operations Intern and since then have worked his way up to holding a position on the Executive team and overseeing the company as President. During his time at Abstrakt, he has assisted in the restructuring of the Partner Sales division which enabled Abstrakt to grow its employee count by 140%. In 2018, Eric earned Workforce Magazine’s Game Changer award and in 2022 was honored as one of St. Louis's 100 Titans.

Jeff Winters is the Founder and CEO of Sapper Consulting, which helps companies deliver data-driven sales campaigns to replace cold calling, drive pipeline and ignite ROI. Their tactics have been featured in Forbes, Inc., HBR, Entrepreneur, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more because they’re up to 300% more effective than standard metrics. Sapper Consulting has experienced tremendous growth, tripling 3 times in 3 years.

Together they have launched The Grow Show podcast and publish weekly episodes to help business leaders improve their processes and procedures. You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.

If you’re looking to improve your sales processes, build out a better sales pipeline, or a better way to grow your agency profitably and sustainably, this episode is chock-full of insights you surely won’t want to miss.

What’s in their glasses: Kentucky Owl Confiscated Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

How Scott started Abstrakt Marketing Group and has been helping businesses have more predictable sales meetings for the past 12 years and counting (03:41)
Eric shares his ascent from starting out as an intern to working his way up to become the president at Abstrakt Marketing Group (05:44)
Jeff recalls his early days starting Sapper Consulting in 2013 and growing it to about 150 employees and over 750 clients today (09:18)
If they had the biggest deal in company history come across your desk, who would Scott, Eric, or Jeff send out to work and close the deal? (13:16)
The number of face-to-face sales presentations Scott’s ever done in his entire career (14:31)
What gets you out of bed in the morning? (15:10)
Debunking the fallacy that you cannot impact meaningful life change through business (17:42)
JJ recalls personally seeing lives change when an agency owner who was stuck at $4M for the longest time exited for $17M eighteen months after building out a sales operation for them (19:41)
What can you do to bring your salespeople out of a slump and move forward in the right direction (21:56)
Eric feels the greatest rush in his career when this happens (24:43)
Joey crushing it as the first guest on The Grow Show - a podcast hosted by Scott, Eric, and Jeff (27:14)
Is the AE-SDR/closer-biz dev rep model the only way modern way to do sales effectively? (28:09)
Some are better at setting appointments, others are better at closing (29:58)
Joey brings up an alternative to the AE-SDR/closer-biz dev rep model for agencies with lower profit margins (32:00)
The concept of the enabled full-cycle salesperson (32:31)
Profitability challenges one can see in the AE-SDR marriage and the enabled full-cycle salesperson model (34:00)
Is the follow-up really the most impactful part? (39:00)
An extra step in the follow-up process that most sales teams just don’t do which can make the jobs of the SDR, sales admin, and closer better (40:30)
How tweaking this model could help sales reps become more motivated at their jobs (41:44)
Why money doesn’t grow on trees - a reminder for every agency owner listening to this podcast (43:44)
Joey points out just how impressive it is to build Abstrakt to be making $60 million per year as a lead gen company (46:36)
What sets up their clients for success and what do agencies who drive more revenue have that others don’t? (47:59)
A key characteristic of their successful customers know how to sell cold outbound leads (49:41)
Why you should always be reminding your clients about the ridiculous amount of activity your service takes and not just the results (51:00)
One major pitfall most agency owners make specifically with outbound lead generation (54:57)
The biggest hurdle right now for Eric and Jeff in their own sales department (57:12)
Why specialization is so crucial in hiring and training sales reps (58:00)
The biggest opportunity that Abstrakt could really work on that would help even more businesses grow (59:00)
“Sell it before you build it” (1:00:00)
Scott, Eric, and Jeff answer a very personal question that you as an agency owner should probably start thinking about as well (1:02:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Abstrakt Marketing Group
Sapper Consulting
The Grow Show Podcast
Scott Scully on LinkedIn
Eric Watkins on LinkedIn
Jeff Winters on LinkedIn

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Skyler Reeves is the Founder and CEO of Ardent Growth out of Murray, Kentucky. They are a company that helps B2B SaaS companies get more value from their content by blending qualitative customer insights with their proprietary content prioritization algorithm. Skyler is on a mission to blend data and creativity to make the web a better place. He holds degrees in both computer science and philosophy (MSU) and is an Iraq War veteran.

In this episode, we talk about Skyler’s journey from war veteran to going to college to study computer science and philosophy to founding an agency focused on SEO and marketing and helping B2B SaaS companies scale their organic traffic with their internal software. He also shares why he’s investing in a coach, in building out a sales operation for Ardent Growth, and his insights on his experiences of hiring the right people for your agency.

This Cast Covers:

How Skyler’s love for creating solutions to unsolvable problems and philosophy got him into the world of SEO and marketing (02:27)
His reasons for joining the military right out of high school and what his experience returning to civilian life was like (05:31)
The genesis of Ardent Growth and his transition from working in logistics to building his own digital firm (09:44)
The value of investing in a coach, having someone speak into your life and your business, and how to go about finding a good coach (11:43)
Why his coach told him about bringing the internal technology Ardent had built out to B2B SaaS companies, private equity, VCs, and agencies (15:58)
The core problem this internal tool has helped solve for a lot of companies looking to invest in content and SEO (17:32)
How they realized the value of their technology would be a great help for digital marketing agencies (19:25)
Did Skyler ever desire to go to market with their tech and make it customer-facing or was the motivation always to serve them internally as they serve other people? (20:21)
How having this internal tool helps their profit margins as an agency (21:40)
Goals and priorities for the agency as Skyler looks to the future of Ardent aside from investing in building out a sales operation (26:54)
Skyler’s decision to push working into the VC and private equity industry as well (31:06)
Why SEO is a challenging endeavor for agencies specifically to get right (33:06)
Skyler recommends where SDA as an agency should focus when it comes to SEO-related efforts (35:45)
Areas where Skyler might still be struggling with in the agency and what he’s doing to work on them (37:20)
One of the largest mistakes Skyler’s done growthwise for the agency is not thinking about people (41:01)
A pretty interesting rule Joey made up when it comes to hiring the best talent for his agency called the 95-5-90 (42:45)
Why Skyler likes looking for coachable people (45:48)
What Joey looks for in people related to mindset (46:45)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Skyler Reeves | LinkedIn
Ardent Growth

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As an owner, CEO, or founder of your agency you want to make sure that you are hiring, training, and compensating your sales reps well. Hiring an SDR manager to handle multiple SDRs might be a good way to achieve this. But what should you be expecting in both roles to make sure they do their jobs effectively? And most importantly, where should you start?

In this episode, Joey shows you how he creates a compensation plan that's fair and equitable for all of your reps, which helps them stay motivated. Plus, learn what's currently trending on the job recruitment market for sales roles, why you should consider giving up equity for your sales leader, and a great way to one-up your competitors that you can easily bake into your sales process.

What’s in Joey’s glass: High West American Prairie Bourbon

What’s in JJ’s glass: Baker's - 7 Year Old Bourbon American Whiskey

If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more about agency sales strategies, tactics, and techniques all backed up with years of expertise, grab The 7-Figure Sales Process Playbook right here: https://salesdrivenagency.com/7-figure-sales/

This Cast Covers:

Our hearts go out to those affected by the recent tragedy in Houston (03:41)
JJ picks Joey’s brain on his thoughts about “laying down our rights for the vulnerable should not be up for debate” (06:11)
A tactic most narrow-minded people use when they say things are not open for dialogue or conversation (08:48)
Should Christians lay down their right for the vulnerable? (09:58)
What the Consitution has afforded a lot of people that most tend to forget (13:37)
JJ shares an interesting parallel for business owners (16:39)
Hiring multiple sales development representatives (SDRs) and what Joey wants agency owners to take away from this experience (21:51)
The current compensation plan Joey has laid out for his SDRs (24:17)
What Joey expects from the role of an SDR manager and how that role can contribute the most value to the team (28:39)
Is it possible to overtrain your salespeople? (32:26)
The four stages of competence and how you can train your sales reps to become unconsciously competent (36:12)
How to make sure you are training to become unconsciously competent in the right context (39:22)
An interesting strategy for agency owners looking to get a leg up from their competition (40:40)
Is giving equity to sales leaders a good idea, and if so, how can you make sure you don’t screw it up? (43:57)
Vesting periods could be another approach to protect your equity and also incentivize your sales leader to stick around for their next slice (46:00)
Cases wherein a sales or growth leader is also an equity holder (47:44)
JJ shares an insightful realization about appreciating all the things he has now and balancing that with still having a lot of big things he wants to achieve in the future (53:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
7-Figure Sales Process Playbook

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Joe Shelerud is the Co-founder and CEO of Ad Advance, a digital ad agency out in Minnesota specializing in Amazon advertising. Ad Advance has been helping e-commerce brands advertise on Amazon since 2017 and offers full-service PPC and DSP management in-house.

Every role Joe has ever played always comes back to the numbers and data piece – being able to track where things are going and then that continual progression that you can see through the numbers in the data.

In this episode, Joe shares his journey to agency co-founder and CEO, why he decided to partner up with his co-founder Matt to build Ad Advance, and the nuts and bolts of how they grew their agency.

This Cast Covers:

Joe Shelerud introduces himself and talks about how Ad Advance started (01:21)
How Joe started building a joke website as a 12-year-old to becoming a chemical engineer and eventually co-founding his agency (03:33)
Trying out a lot of different business ideas (including a brewery kit that bombed) and finally having the Amazon piece stick (05:57)
The challenges of starting an agency with no marketing or finance background (07:28)
Meeting his co-founder Matt Wiklund and what he realized was missing from all his previous business ideas that didn’t lead to success (08:10)
How they started a partnership and the conversations they went through before signing off on their agreement to become co-founders (09:32)
Making sure both Joe and Matt were fully aligned in all of the things concerning the agency (11:39)
Joey explains the slicing pie model which is all about slicing up the company based on formulaic contribution (12:21)
Letting go of the ego is what makes Joe and Matt work well together (14:26)
The first two to three years of Ad Advance were just focused on developing the tools that would allow the agency to scale what they were doing (17:11)
Why Joe and Matt are dead-set on building Ad Advance as a big sustaining asset as of now (19:12)
How the agency has historically grown – through word of mouth, inbound marketing, or outbound sales (21:27)
Where Joe sees a lot more opportunities for growth and the priority and focuses on the agency moving forward (28:07)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Joe Shelerud | LinkedIn
Ad Advance

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Are you still having trouble getting out of sales and letting your sales reps take the lead? Well, hopefully, this episode helps! Joey shares the exact framework he uses to build out your scripting process for the SDRs in Sales Driven Agency. Not just that, but he also gives us insights on whether somebody can be trained or taught to have killer sales instincts, whether choosing purpose-driven companies as your niche can make your agency profitable, and what’s actually going on with the job and business landscape today.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Jesse James American Outlaw Tennessee Whiskey

What’s in JJ’s glass: Baker's - 7 Year Old Bourbon American Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Why the heck is the restaurant industry dying and what is contributing to this situation? (05:16)
The age-old dilemma of whether to pursue stability, ease, and convenience versus freedom, flexibility, and optionality (12:03)
What Joey believes is a recipe for unhappiness and anxiety (12:52)
Trends we’re currently noticing about hiring and the reasons behind this shift (20:03)
JJ likens the hiring and job market landscape right now to what’s happening in college football recruitment (23:08)
The challenges in working with ‘purpose-driven companies’ from an identifying your TAM or list-building perspective (26:40)
The first question you need to ask when building an offer or picking a niche (29:15)
Is targeting purpose-driven companies a good or bad idea? (34:08)
The core components of crushing cold calling (36:40)
How to grab somebody’s attention in the first 3 seconds of a call (39:09)
Initial conversation-starter questions to get the person you’re calling to the next step (12:22)
The type of question you should never ask if you want to move the conversation forward and get your desired outcome (13:43)
JJ recaps the exact framework for building out a scripting process for your SDRs or sales reps during cold calls (17:51)
What you’re probably missing out on by not joining The Best Damn Agency Mastermind (22:05)
Can you teach or train killer instincts in sales or is it just something that you either have or you don't? (25:43)
Would Joey rather have a steady Eddy predictable salesperson who’s quite average in performance or someone with an aggressive sales killer instinct but is an asshole and who you might lose in 18 months? (28:19)
The people Joey looks up to in terms of where he wants to be (31:22)
Are you running your business on your own terms or is it running you? (37:05)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
7-Figure Sales Process Playbook

View Details

Your agency is growing, and you're seeing more and more clients coming through the door. But as your agency expands and brings on more projects, it's important to stay focused on your finances.

While it may seem like a good thing that you're bringing in more projects and revenue, there are actually two things you need to watch out for when it comes to your financials once you start scaling your agency: shrinking profit margins and margin bleed. In this episode, Chris and I talk about how to be more intentional with your finances when scaling your agency, increasing profit margins, and understanding where you need to get rid of expense bloat or margin bleed. Chris also shares how he started in the agency space and was able to grow Better Way CPA into a distributed firm with an international team.

This Cast Covers:

Where most agencies struggle in managing their profit margins (03:07)
Two things to watch out for in your finances once you start scaling your agency: shrinking profit margins and margin bleed
Is there a common pricing model that Chris likes and common mistakes most agencies make when it comes to pricing (06:24)
Why not enough people understand the importance of investing in talent (07:43)
The one thing that might be preventing you from scaling (08:41)
Reasons why Chris recommends hiring a higher talent who’s more senior than you (09:08)
How Chris got caught up in the agency space and why he chose to work with marketing agencies specifically (12:27)
Chris gives the typical net profit margin for agencies he’s seeing today (15:38)
Why you should be sounding the alarm a.k.a. a bit worried if your net profit margin sinks below 15% (16:25)
What can agencies start doing to see a big difference in profitability and boost that net profit margin (17:18)
How to get rid of “expense bloat” (19:44)
Evaluating projects and clients you bring on can definitely help you fix your top-line revenue number (21:08)
How Chris grew Better Way CPA through inbound, referrals, and organic means (24:34)
What’s on the horizon for marketing agencies and how can you prepare for the shift in the agency landscape (25:46)
The first place to look at when deciding on cutting off expenses (27:53)
Chris talks about the Data-Driven Marketing Agency e-book (30:23)
The importance of analyzing both financial and non-financial data in every aspect of the business (30:53)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Chris Hervochon | LinkedIn
Better Way CPA
Scaling the Data Driven Marketing Agency Ebook

View Details

If you’re serious about winning, then you have to have an extreme ownership mindset – not only for yourself but for your team as well. That means accepting responsibility for your failures and mistakes – something most people aren't willing to do but can make all the difference between a great salesperson or agency owner and a not-so-great one. In this SOTR episode, we're digging into what it means to have a culture of winning, how to onboard new salespeople and enable them to perform their very best, what it's like when everybody practices extreme ownership, and what you need to do to go from eight to nine figures as an agency. Also, JJ drills Joey on some pop culture questions. You'll find out his favorite movie of all time and what he was like as a young, angry teenager.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Manik Black Edition Extra Añejo

This Cast Covers:

The current crypto landscape and why you should be investing in sales instead (01:16)
JJ gets a hoot out of asking Joey questions that have nothing to do with business or sales (05:30)
What Joey’s done to build a high-quality network (13:35)
How Joey discovered a lazy hack to growing as someone who everyone wants to meet during a networking event (14:06)
What does a sales operation comprise? (19:15)
The key components of an onboarding plan for a sales rep (22:21)
Why you need to build out a very robust product market training for your sales reps to learn (23:50)
How long should you be handholding a new sales rep? (26:06)
What you should AVOID doing as a founder if you have your sales reps shadow you during a sales call (29:02)
Why having a very well-oiled process for sales is so crucial when training and onboarding salespeople (31:10)
What does extreme ownership mean in sales and what does that look like? (32:31)
The best way to improve your win rate is to look at your loss rate, why you’re losing deals, not how to win more deals (34:00)
Questions to ask to determine whether the salesperson applicant practices extreme ownership or not (35:55)
What happens when people take extreme ownership in sales and every area of their lives (38:10)
JJ shares a cute and adorable anecdote about her three-year-old daughter getting featured in a magazine (46:19)
What’s it gonna take to go from eight to nine figures as an agency? (47:55)
As you grow, you’ll need to start ignoring the choosing a bit of particular niche advice and start branching out (50:42)
How to keep it fun and fresh for your salespeople and for your sales team every single day? (52:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Joe Lashinger is the Founding Partner at Think it First, a digital strategy, design, and technology team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has about 20+ years of executive-level experience in all aspects of sales and marketing. Over the years, he’s had the opportunity to work with clients both large and small, across a variety of industries. They build web experiences and applications that have a real impact on our customers’ business and their bottom line.

In this episode, Joe explains how he got to where he is today and the growth he experienced along the way. He discusses what worked for Think It First and what didn't, the reason for their success, and his future plans for the agency. He states that “people are everything” and why the college system needs to include apprenticeships in the curriculum. He also talks about how this commitment has impacted his hiring process, noting that they’ve hired good people who don’t have traditional agency experience but do well in their roles because of their attitude and will toward learning new things. Finally, Joe gives his thoughts on how their agency will fare over the next few years and where the industry is heading.

This Cast Covers:

Why Joe didn’t make it to the BDAM anti-retreat in Tahoe (05:07)
Joe’s pro golfer background before jumping into the agency space and starting Think It First (06:16)
His opinion of college and what he would change about it if he could (08:04)
Joey proposes college should be a combination of taking courses and micro-apprenticeships (11:15)
Joe gives real-world examples of these apprenticeships by sharing his experiences at the Golf Management Program (14:45)
People are everything - why some of the best people on his team are not classically trained for the work they do now (16:50)
How Think It First has grown as an agency to hitting double-digit revenue year over year (19:53)
Joe explains his thought process from wrestling through niching to making the decision to niche and how it’s helped the agency grow (21:50)
The two best things Joe has done recently that expedited his growth as a CEO and agency owner (29:09)
What the future holds for Think It First does the future look like for us? (31:06)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Joe Lashinger | LinkedIn
Think It First | Website

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Ryan Stewart is a well-known marketing expert and serial entrepreneur. He has developed a process to help owners scale their businesses in the online ecosystem by allowing them to step back after realizing the company’s potential. He has more than ten years of experience in this industry and has done many things during this period. He is currently the Managing Partner of WEBRIS, an SEO agency that helps clients get more customers from Google search using their fast, effective Sprint Methodology; and Managing Partner at The Blueprint Training, helping SEO agencies scale past $100k by "productizing" their service (aka the SEO Sprint Methodology).

Stewart sold WEBRIS in 2018 after scaling the SEO and digital marketing company to $1.1 million ARR in a little over a year. As the fraction CMO at Ardent Cannabis, Ryan Stewart took the company’s annual sales from $750,000 to $1.4 million in just eight months.

He lives in Miami with his amazing wife (Pamela) and sausage dog. They are also in the process of building up their own real estate portfolio of short-term rental (STR) properties.

What if your agency’s sales and marketing were on the same page? If you can get the sales dialed, it makes your marketing that much better. With this explosion of growth comes bigger margins, more clients, greater revenue, and a better culture. This SOTR episode explores the topics of marrying marketing with sales, staying sharp by staying on top of the latest trends, taking care of your people, and why there's so much money in the cannabis industry.

This Cast Covers:

Why there’s so much money in the cannabis industry that people in it don’t know what to do with all of it (05:13)
How cannabis companies make so much cash they’re willing to take an injection of their capital and pay 30% interest on it (05:41)
The law of supply and demand and the number of limited licenses there are in the United States (07:26)
Ryan talks about his role as a fractional CMO for this cannabis company (08:22)
What product-led marketing should actually look like (08:45)
Why he’s being paid a premium as a consultant for these companies and not only that but also being given an earnout (11:56)
How Ryan watched this company grow from pulling their hair out not knowing how they’ll be able to pay the rent to now having so much money they have no idea what to do with it (12:20)
Choosing to do things that forces dudes like Ryan and Joey to sharpen the knife and reinvest back into their own education (13:08)
The main reason Joey’s going to take 3 or 4 really elite high-caliber coaching clients (hint: it’s not about the money) (13:57)
How quickly the digital landscape changes and if you don’t keep up, you’ll get so left behind (14:42)
Why Ryan keeps banging out content on YouTube that doesn’t talk about marketing or SEO, and all that stuff his companies are well-known for (17:24)
The people who really understand how to get attention are the ones who draw a line in the sand and they don't give a shit (21:42)
When it comes to sales, does Ryan still believe you shouldn’t be a pushy, jackass salesperson when selling a service like SEO? (26:55)
You’ve got to be comfortable making other people uncomfortable and ushing them to make a decision they don’t want but need to do (27:33)
JJ, Joey, and Ryan talk about extreme ownership in sales roles (31:12)
There are different ways to sell and different types of salespeople who can be successful in their own way (31:48)
How do you hire, build, and train a rockstar sales talent, but also retain them? (35:08)
Find out what your salespeople care about and get to know them individually (06:30)
How Ryan has never had somebody leave or quit in the last eight years of business at his two companies (37:40)
The surprising number of agencies Ryan has worked with are either on their way to seven figures or have already gotten there (39:52)
Joey gives advice for all agency owners - define success for each client and identify what their win is (42:03)
Is there still something holding Joey and Ryan back in getting to where they potentially want to go? (47:16)
The parable of a six-year-old a.k.a. JJ’s daughter on how to celebrate your wins (50:57)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Ryan Stewart’s website
Ryan Stewart on LinkedIn

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Anson Sowby shares hot takes on a number of topics ranging from the effects of culture and the pandemic to the back-end processes of his company.

This Cast Covers:

Get to know more about Battery (1:54)
What pushed Anson to be an entrepreneur (4:49)
How Anson manages his team with the Angeleno culture (11:45)
A person’s productivity level varies during the pandemic. Here’s how the people at Battery are coping (12:06)
Battery’s keys for growth (14:34)
Narrow down your goals into short-term and long-term. Here’s what Anson aims for Battery (16:58)
Agency owners don’t serve the clients – they serve their employees. Here’s why (25:08)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Anson Sowby | LinkedIn
Battery Agency | Website

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Setting goals may be overwhelming especially when some may seem very hard to attain. Joey Gilkey and JJ Russell discuss points varying from how to determine reasonable and unreasonable goals to anything in between, over a glass of some well-earned fine booze.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Redbreast Irish Whiskey

What’s in JJ’s glass: Buffalo Trace Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

How Joey and JJ witnessed an online rampage on Instagram (04:04)
Society’s reality (06:05)
Let’s talk about accountability. Joey and JJ discuss how they give credit where it’s due (11:32)
How to hold people accountable (12:23)
JJ shares his firsthand experience of Joey as a boss (14:43)
The majority of salespeople waste the majority of their time”, here’s why (23:23)
Get to know more about the doubling effect (24:07)
How to properly distribute designated roles as efficient as possible (25:23)
Is there a future where marketing becomes so effective that it will replace sales completely? (33:00)
Reverse engineering your scenario: Joey gives a detailed example of turning your unreasonable to reasonable (43:40)
On evaluating external and internal factors: when shit hits the fan, how do we go about it? (50:40)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Amanda Dixon’s M&A company aims to help entrepreneurs in this “tired industry” buy or sell their businesses. In this episode, Joey and Amanda talk dive deep into the M&A process and touch on topics such as determining the common reasons why agency owners decide to sell their businesses up to the valuations and earnouts of M&A companies like Barney.

This Cast Covers:

Get to know more about Barney (2:21)
What led Amanda to establish an M&A agency (3:44)
How the pandemic helped strengthen the confidence of budding agency owners (4:34)
Amanda shares the most frequent reason why founders put their agencies up for sale (5:43)
What potential agency buyers look for (8:19)
Amanda shares the trend of behaviors of both buyers and sellers (11:34)
That red flag of a statement that you should void declaring this statement to buyers (15:43)
The different teams that compromise an M&A agency (16:33)
Why EBITDA is the most important reliable measure for agency owners (20:39)
How Barney avoids nightmare M&A experiences (25:14)
How people perceive earnouts of an M&A agency (28:31)
Get to know how M&A agencies earn from their services (31:55)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Amanda Dixon | LinkedIn
Barney Website

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So many agency owners try to be everything to everyone, making it difficult for these same owners to understand their path to profitability.

But as you're aware, they don't have the right sales operation in place or even the right resources to know how to increase their sales and profits past the seven or eight-figure mark.

In this episode, we discuss how you can stop being seen as a commodity that sells a la carte offers and stand out as a consultative agency that knows exactly what its target market needs. Also, discover the one thing your sales reps need to know in order to sell your services more effectively, and how you as a sales leader can help them through meetings and reviews.

This Cast Covers:

Why people who stand by a certain ideology do not actually want to engage in difficult conversations when the rubber meets the road (06:11)
Empathetic people don’t necessarily have any room on their plate to have hard conversations about harder topics (10:44)
JJ’s practical takeaways in not standing idly by and actually doing something about issues that are harder to swallow (12:38)
Why Liberals and Conservatives are being pitted against each other by the “real enemy” (14:15)
How product market training for sales leaders and sales reps can make them more effective in their role (18:04)
The important components of a product knowledge base (18:55)
What does a salesperson actually need to know to be able to sell something that’s really technical? (22:24)
How the curse of knowledge actually confuses your clients and stops them from buying from you (22:46)
Combining these two things will get your salesperson up and running pretty quick (26:03)
What most ideal customer profiles lack that keeps them below the seven-figure mark (29:07)
Why having a very narrow and specific ideal customer profile is so crucial (30:06)
Which moves the needle faster from a sales perspective – niching via the industry you serve or niching via the service you offer? (36:07)
Why there might be a third axis when identifying your niche according to Joey - the z-axis (38:30)
The difference between a meeting and review when it comes to sales leadership (40:28)
What actually gets covered during a review and how often are they performed? (42:01)
Why Joey believes selling an a la carte service is pointless (47:59)
What it means to be a consultative seller (51:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Every great pastry is made from a recipe. Here’s Chris Carr’s own marketing recipe to success. Learn more about his flow chart called the gap assessment in this episode!

Chris founded Farotech at age 23 where it is now an award-winning marketing strategy agency standing firm at 21 years running. Farotech is a digital marketing agency focusing mainly on inbound sales and lead generation.

This Cast Covers:

Who is Chris Carr? (1:14)
Joey and Chris share their thoughts on the ongoing Ukraine and Russia war (2:11)
How a 21-year-old digital marketing company’s evolution looks like (9:20)
What is gap assessment and why should you take note of it (12:20)
Joey shares their Sales Driven Roadmap (15:32)
Make sure to avoid this trap as an agency (17:39)
Avoid shortcuts so you won’t jeopardize your relationship with your loyal clients. Chris shares a perfect analogy on this (21:06)
How Farotech’s team is growing (26:51)
What’s cooking with Farotech (28:53)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Chris Carr | LinkedIn
Farotech Website

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Another exciting Sales on the Rocks episode for all of you! We talk about topics ranging from current events to tips and thoughts on advocacies, ad dependencies, newsletters, performance evaluation, company acquiring, and more!

What’s in Joey’s glass: E. H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel

What’s in JJ’s glass: Company Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

Things get political! Here’s what you missed from the last SOTR episode (03:28)
JJ and Joey give their takes on current events (05:22)
Are you a strong advocate? Then walk the walk while you talk the talk (10:02)
How Joey and his team got scammed by a previous employee (16:28)
Are newsletters for everyone who wants to grow their audiences? (28:02)
Do you have a salary goal in mind? Connect the numbers and see how many clients you’d need to get to attain it (29:20)
The best way to tap potential clients (31:27)
Lead magnets and tactics that had helped Joey build his audience (33:51)
On planning meetings: here’s how you should create weekly plans for healthy work discussions (36:20)
Planning on acquiring an agency? Check out these loans that could help you (42:06)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Brandon Amoroso is a Gen Z entrepreneur and CEO who founded ElectrIQ Marketing, helping e-commerce brands improve retention and increase LTV with thoughtfully tailored lifecycle strategies, email/SMS marketing, and web design and development. He is a DTC leader who focuses on Shopify and its lifecycle marketing and retention, as well as web design and development.

Brandon founded ElectrIQ Marketing in 2018 at age 22 while he was studying at the University of Southern California.

In this episode, Brandon shares how he went on and established his company while simultaneously continuing university life. He also shares his experience as a Gen Z entrepreneur himself and how he maintains a harmonious working relationship with a team of dominant Gen Zers as well.

This Cast Covers:

Get to know more about Brandon Amoroso (1:08)
How Brandon juggled his career and his university life (5:06)
Turning the vision into a reality: how Brandon paved his way to success (8:18)
Don’t be too hyper-focused on results. Here’s why you shouldn’t overlook strengthening your internal processes (10:11)
How word of mouth marketing worked best for ElectrIQ Marketing (13:20)
How ElectrIQ as a Gen Z agency reels in Gen Z professionals to be part of their team (16:15)
What Brandon does to maintain a healthy Gen Z dominant team (17:27)
Here’s what Gen Z professionals are prioritizing in terms of their potential employers’ benefits (22:12)
How ElectrIQ Marketing solved their dilemma with time tracking efficiency (26:50)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Brandon Amoroso | Website
Brandon Amoroso | LinkedIn
ElectrIQ Marketing

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When we asked CEOs, agency owners, founders, and executives if they had a follow-up system for proposals that fall through the cracks, you’d be shocked by most of them who answered none. All most of them do is send one follow-up email and that’s it. There's nothing worse than investing hours and letting it go to waste. Well, we’re gonna change the way you do follow-ups from now on. Thank us later.

Aside from following up, we also discuss selling the full engagement versus a foot in the door offer, the 8-minute rule for avoiding no-shows, a quick email you can send to prospects who ghost you, and the importance of copywriting in sales.

This Cast Covers:

Joey gives JJ the 30-second quick fix for sprucing up the production value of his studio background (01:07)
Why do people pick fights just for the sake of picking fights? (05:40)
Stop neglecting yourself for the sake of everybody else and take time for self-care (11:54)
Joey and JJ talk about hypersonic missiles and whether or not the US can defend itself against a full-scale attack (16:52)
How to get an agency owner to see beyond a small vision or past his ego (19:15)
The major differences both in how you run your calls and selling a foot in the door versus selling the full engagement (23:06)
Joey defines what a foot in the door offer is and why it’s the best (24:18)
A specific system for following up – Joey’s one, five, and eight-minute rule for avoiding no shows (33:03)
How to follow up on somebody that falls off the grid post-proposal or post-contract a.k.a. “ghosts” you (37:16)
The seven-word email that’s guaranteed to get you a reply from your prospects (39:18)
How so many potential deals got lost due to the lack of follow-ups (40:30)
A crucial element that often gets overlooked in the art of sales - copywriting (42:42)
The dangers and deception of social media and how to avoid getting sucked into your phone all day (48:37)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Kevin Miller is the CEO and co-founder of GR0, a digital marketing agency specializing in CEO and focusing on helping brands to rank number 1 in search where they cater mostly to DTC e-commerce brands. He has helped scale the best D2C & technology companies with proven growth marketing frameworks, and launched a grammar website, thewordcounter.com, to prove his strategies work.

In this episode, Kevin shares how he came about establishing his own empire and how the business thrived during the pandemic. We also dive deeper into which key aspects of success Kevin focuses on the most.

This Cast Covers:

Get to know more about Kevin Miller (01:21)
What is more to digital marketing than ads (03:22)
How thewordcounter.com came about (04:06)
What career Kevin wanted before getting his head onto the entrepreneur game (06:22)
How Kevin’s business succeeded even more during the pandemic (09:00)
Kevin’s influential list (10:43)
Employees are key to success: here’s why (14:16)
Why you shouldn’t underestimate word-of-mouth marketing (22:25)
The best leaders are those who don’t get too emotional in public (35:20)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Kevin Miller | Website
Kevin Miller | LinkedIn
Gr0 Website

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As a founder, you're probably thinking about your exit at some point in the future. Most of the founders and owners we've talked to have been actively seeking to sell their businesses within the next decade—and as you might imagine, many of them find it difficult to create a plan that positions their company as a desirable acquisition target without overburdening themselves with extra work.

In this episode, we’ll reveal how you can get a head start on what you need to do if you plan on exiting or selling your agency one day. We go over whether you should focus on crushing inbound or outbound depending on your growth goals. We also talk about a popular book that’s been mentioned in our Mastermind lately, the Who, Not How, and why it’s critical to hire the right “who” in sales even if we keep harping that process is more important than people.

This Cast Covers:

Joey goes on a quick rant about cancel culture triggered by Lady A (01:16)
JJ discovers a new hobby that he can do regularly, makes him sweat and active, and is pretty challenging (05:00)
What would make Joey pack up and leave the country (10:08)
Why only very few agencies venture into selling an AI-driven, SaaS product-driven, SEO, or link building tool that can differentiate them from the rest of their competitors (13:44)
The SaaS software Joey would have probably built that’s both a CRM and data tool (15:53)
Why Joey still wins at crypto even if he knows jack shit other than the fact he knows who to listen to in the space (18:46)
Critical things most people don’t tell you about selling your agency (20:37)
What Joey would do if he wanted to exit SDA at this level right now (26:24)
How the Who, Not How Framework applies in the sales space knowing that process is more important than people (28:31)
Would you rather be an agency crushing inbound or an agency crushing outbound? (36:51)
Can you untether a really robust company culture that you value from your sales team? (41:12)
Why the American workforce has been over-emphasizing culture (15:57)
Elements to look at if you’re choosing between companies that have different company cultures (18:14)
Should you ramp up retainer-based work and perpetuity-based, residual-based sales if you’re already doing very well with project-based work? (26:33)
When is the best time to build referral relationships? (29:45)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Nick Stagge is the Founder and CEO of The Grounded Company, a company that specializes in designing content that converts — emails, ads, websites, gifs, video, and more. Before creating his myriad of companies, Nick has worked with a number of notable brands including Zumiez, Skullcandy, and GoPro. With more than 25 years where 20 of it was with Nick working in notable companies, he decided that it was time for him to establish his own instead. Up to date, Nick has founded 5 companies of his own where all are fully running currently. Aside from his passion for business, Nick is also an advocate for mental health.

In this episode, Nick shares his experience on how he felt like it was time for him to finally build his own empire instead of existing in an empire of others. We dive deep into each of his 5 founded companies and the reason why they have been built.

This Cast Covers:

How The Grounded Company came about (01:24)
What are cult-like followings and how are they important? (06:16)
This is what you need to focus on building first before targeting your general audience (11:27)
The reality of running an agency (16:42)
Just started an agency of your own? Don’t have the service or people your client is inquiring about? Check out this outsourcing model Nick does with his agency before saying yes! (17:43)
The biggest risk in startup companies isn’t cash, but reputation: why you shouldn’t always be a “‘yes-man” to your clients (20:45)
Nick shares the reason behind why he established his company We Are Mind, which aims to support people in business with mental illness (24:37)
Get to know Brenda and Chop Shop Productions, two brands out of the 4 of Nick’s myriad of companies (34:13)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
LinkedIn | Nick Stagge
wearemind.org

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If you're like most of the guests we've interviewed on this podcast, then you are constantly trying to improve your agency. Whether that's figuring out your pricing, building out your sales operation, or getting your agency to the next level, it can be tough. Luckily, in this Sales on the Rocks episode, we’re gonna walk you through how you can do all that by setting better realistic and specific goals, learning how to charge more, and providing crazy value during a simple sales conversation. Tune in to learn the 80-20 rule of pricing, advice for reaching higher annual revenue targets, and a simple mentality that can help you win bigger in business and in life.

This Cast Covers:

The case of Joey’s missing truck (01:09)
Joey and JJ recap the recent BDAM anti-retreat and share their takeaways (08:15)
The words you speak over yourself and your loved ones are powerful (09:41)
What got JJ dreaming about the massively growth-minded goals (12:33)
How does defining what you want for your business inform what your sales operation looks like? (17:31)
Why Joey is also a fan of the “and, not or” mentality and how this mentality helps in setting realistic goals (20:56)
A lot of people set goals in a very safe manner (24:47)
Can two partners who are totally misaligned coexist in a business together? (27:31)
What most agency owners and CEOs forget to factor in when it comes to projecting sales targets in the future (30:03)
When you play big boy games, you make the right decisions and come up with big boy goals (31:11)
How people are limited by their total addressable market (32:00)
Three options to scale: provide new services, serve new industries, or charge more (32:38)
The 80-20 rule of pricing (44:06)
Being in a hyper niche might be what’s preventing you from getting to the next level of growth (36:45)
Advice for badass agency owners who crushed their revenue goals but want to expand to that next level (38:13)
As you exhaust your TAM, do you become incredibly unattractive to potential buyers? (38:55)
Joey’s thoughts on advertising your price versus having that be a part of your sales conversation (41:11)
Pricing the client versus pricing the work: why it’s always better to get into a consultative sales conversation with your prospects (45:02)
Why Joey hates it when agencies do hourly or flat pricing (46:16)
First time on the show: JJ and Joey appreciate their wives (51:01)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Jack Paxton is the co-founder of Top Growth Marketing (TGM), an agency that specializes in customer acquisition through paid ads such as SEM, social, display, shopping, and innovative digital marketing strategies.

Alongside TGM, Jack has co-founded two other companies including Hyax and Vyper. His motivation comes from building tools that help brands create a better buying experience with customers. He is also a speaker and Growth Marketing Expert, accelerating companies to multi-million dollar run rates in less than 6 months, conducting company audits, and consulting for growth in customer acquisition.

Outsourcing may be a great way for agency owners to have fewer hassle transactions but with it comes a slightly harsh truth. In this episode, Jack shares his experiences on how to be great at finding the right people for your team.

This Cast Covers:

How Jack got his first closed deal at age 12 (3:41)
The reality of outsourcing with American clients (8:33)
Outsourcing is great but maybe it’s time for you to consider operating with a hybrid business model (9:30)
Joey and Jack share their experience with their vetting processes in their respective companies (11:43)
Why The 30 Day Work Trial is a healthy process you should try (14:13)
Jack shares how he grew his agency (15:42)
The 5 different evolutions of a sales team (17:53)
Active and passive income: how scaling both streams may be the best move yet (24:04)
Diving deep onto the different profitability streams of income in an ad platform (25:25)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Jack Paxton on LinkedIn
Jack Paxton’s Website
Top Growth Marketing Website

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In this episode of Sales on the Rocks, we talk about buying an agency that's bigger than ours, and Joey’s experience of merging his brand with theirs. Joey also shares his thoughts on agencies working with purpose-driven companies and how that can be a hindrance to their profitability. JJ also brings up a question about the Gen Z workforce and how that can be either a challenge or an opportunity for more agencies.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Alani Nu Hawaiian Shaved Ice Energy Drink

This Cast Covers:

What’s the deal in this big push to make everything electric? (07:12)
Vulnerabilities with going electric and living on the grid (09:10)
Is it a good idea to buy an agency that's bigger than yours and merge your brand with theirs? (14:40)
If you have access to capital and believe that you can actually add value to that business as it merges with your brand, then it’s worth buying the bigger company (16:46)
Why Joey thinks working with purpose-driven companies could be a hindrance to agencies (19:35)
Is there a standard threshold or revenue expectation per full-time employee? (29:07)
What most freelancers turned solopreneurs turned CEOs don’t realize about maximizing profitability for their agencies (32:24)
Is there a benefit to building out a sales team where you leverage unique skill sets? (38:52)
Consideration points for paying somebody in a sales role depending on their different tiers of industry experience (45:52)
Do Gen Z’s expect to work less and get paid more? Is this a significant problem? (23:28)
How the working times have changed from generation to generation (27:50)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Ian Martins is the Managing Partner at Bell Curve, a creative growth agency that works at the intersection of brand and performance. He is a veteran in the agency field who has worked with a number of huge brands such as Proctor and Gamble, Microsoft, Segment, and more. Aside from these prestige brands, he also is committed to helping growing startup brands that are yet to make their way into the industry.

From a rock star in the music industry to a rock star in marketing, Ian Martins has been a veteran in the industry for years with clients ranging from multinational brands to inspiring startups who are eager for growth.

In this episode, Ian emphasizes the importance of branding and why it should not be overlooked as more business owners tend to focus on garnering sales than the previous with it being in the forefront. He also shares why an agency owner should not be scared to start again and rebuild a new business model to steer away from past mistakes with the first.

This Cast Covers:

Are our dream jobs really what we want? (4:29)
Advertising: The rock and roll of the business world (5:29)
Diving deep into Bell Curve’s three concentric circles of Bell Curve: increase lifetime value, acquire customers and build brand moat (7:21)
Why you shouldn’t overlook branding as one of the most important components of a business (9:22)
The outcomes of a successful brand building (10:39)
The difference between growth marketing vs any other type of marketing (13:20)
The one question you should ask yourself before starting your own agency (17:47)
Know your target audience through the guide questions of vertical and horizontal niching (23:17)
Don’t be afraid to start over. Ian shares how his second agency became a success after not repeating the lapses from his first (30:41)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Bell Curve
Demand Curve
Ian Martins
Ian Martins on LinkedIn
Ian Martins on Twitter

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In this episode of Sales on the Rocks, we talk about how to run diagnostics on your sales data, why the Great Reset theory most economists are talking about is worth looking into, and how having a foot in the door offer can make all the difference when selling to large enterprises and other organizations. Plus discover a simple framework that helps you figure out how to manage your time better and ensure you're spending time on the things that drive the most value to your life.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Chattanooga Whiskey Straight Bourbon Whiskey Barrel 111

What’s in JJ’s glass: Rabbit Hole Cavehill Kentucky Straight Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

Is the Great Reset something to be feared? (05:29)
The bigger overarching idea is influencing the grassroots localization of it (10:15)
Is there an action plan to stop this from happening other than being informed? (14:08)
Why you should be a little more cautious about what the media wants to show you (18:58)
How to prep for and effectively get the maximum value out of attending masterminds, conferences, etc. (22:49)
Show up with intention I think having intention as a word, (26:19)
The strategy and campaign structuring might be different, but the principles are the same (28:43)
Don’t go after the company, go after the individuals in those companies and do an account-based approach (29:40)
Joey’s advice on doing account-based sales whether it’s for a Fortune 500 company or a small company: Start as high as humanly possible in the organization as it relates to the problem (30:47)
Always take a pyramid top-down approach (31:08)
A badass campaign done by one of the Best Damn Mastermind members to get in front of the decision-makers of the company (32:41)
When you've got a company that sells a really technical service wanting to go after a bunch of high profile companies, what type of sales rep do you hire? (37:07)
Do agencies need to have that one specific front-end offer or do you have to play the RFP game? (39:10)
Why the foot in the door offer is advantageous for every organization, including enterprises (41:02)
Running self-diagnostics on your data: What to check for and fix when your deal velocity goes down (43:57)
Why your data needs to be clean and accessible at all times (47:29)
How do you cut out the noise? (49:04)
ODD - a simple framework Joey uses to manage his time and figure out which activities drive the most value (49:46)
Why you should go look at your calendar right now and label events red, yellow, and green (53:39)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Joe Pulizzi is the founder of The Tilt and the Content Marketing Institute, is a seasoned content entrepreneur for more than 20 years. From coaching the ever-reliable marketers to evolving for the modern days’ demands with the influencer age, he founded The Tilt. The Tilt is set up to help big and small content creators, bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers and more build their businesses.

In this episode, Joe shares how six key areas of goal-setting helped him gain the title of one of the world’s top content marketing authorities. He also shares why content creation goes beyond merely creating itself and why this scale in content creation should not be overlooked!

This Cast Covers:

The power of visual manifestation: how Joe manifested a $15M company buy-out into $26M (3:49)
The one thing you should do for you to make greater outcomes (4:38)
The formula to success: 6 key areas for goal setting you should swear by for great decision making (6:08)
The significance of COVID-19 with the spike of the uprising of content creators (10:37)
NFT: the next big business model you should watch out for (12:51)
Everyone can be a content creator but not everyone could be a content entrepreneur (15:53)
How to organize your content properly to avoid content clutter (20:27)
With the number of major platforms booming at this time, don’t pressure yourself by trying to keep up with each one. Instead, focus on where you’re amazing at (29:33)
Why knowing your audience in content creation matters most than you think (33:02)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
The Tilt
Creator Economy Expo
Joe Pulizzi on LinkedIn
Content Inc. by Joe Pulizzi

Content Inc.: How Entrepreneurs Use Content to Build Massive Audiences and Create Radically Successful Businesses

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We go back to the basics for a detailed rundown on how aspiring agency owners or agency owners, in general, could learn or improve. Ranging from topics like how to garner the best results whether in sales and internal processes– even up to the hosts’ stances on current events! Joey Gilkey and JJ Rusell share with us these tips and sentiments over a glass of well-earned fine booze– on the rocks!

This Cast Covers:

Where to cop an all-around playbook for just $1500 (03:06)
Why building your product/service first before finding your buyers is the fastest way to fail (5:06)
Generalism is never the path forward: Here’s why niching down is a must (10:09)
The process of how The Sales Driven Agency helps establish businesses (10:45)
A rundown on the agency essentials (13:29)
The reality of a lead generation agency owner (17:02)
The one thing most agency owners don’t do that keep them from seeing massive growth in their business (19:58)
JJ and Joey tackle the hiring process: Find out the one question Joey asks his hiree to test them (22:15)
There’s nothing wrong with reaching out for help when starting from scratch. JJ shares what you should do if what you have in front of you is a tabula rasa (31:58)
If growth architect agencies like Sales Driven Agency weren’t around, what was a budding agency owner with little to zero knowledge to do? (33:51)
The one industry Joey avoids if he wasn’t in the agency field (36:48)
Aiming to achieve true growth? Joey shares three pillars that you should keep in mind (42:17)
Joey shares his sentiment on the ongoing war in his homeland (49:09)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Influencers, who are dominating social media, are like celebrities where they may have handlers and agencies managing them. When these companies tend to become more number-focused, what they might be leaving out is giving them freedom to these artists to be more genuine when promoting the specific product or service they’re tasked to.

This Cast Covers:

How Zak bridges his practice on stoicism with his agency, ApexDrop (6:33)
How Zak started an affiliated marketing agency at the age of 18, selling thousands of dollars through World of Warcraft (12:36)
What makes ApexDrop different from other micro-influencer agencies (18:40)
The Trust Transaction Ladder: How this framework is the best way in establishing credibility (20:47)
Customers are the new marketers: how influencers paved their way onto the marketing funnel (22:30)
How ApexDrop micro-influencer marketing with product trade can turn into an advocacy building system (24:20)
Zak gives advice on how you can earn your way to success while still within your comfort zone (29:43)
The hack to getting the perfect master playbook (35:11)
What are the other micro-influencer agencies doing wrong? (37:20)
Want to be an effective micro-influencer agency? Be the new neighbor. (40:02)
When do you know that you’re an effective micro-influencer handler/agency? (42:40)
Who’s ApexDrop’s biggest competitor? (41:49)
People may jump to the conclusion that handling micro-influencers may be easy, but this is why they’re wrong (42:24)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Ryan Holiday Stoicism Collection
ApexDrop’s Website
Email Zak at zak@apexdrop.com

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Chris Dreyer is the Founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a digital marketing agency focused on SEO (search engine optimization) and helping elite personal injury law firms land serious injury and auto accident cases through Google’s organic search results. As a personal injury law firm SEO agency, they serve clients all over the country to help them win first page rankings on high-value keywords.

This was a fun Sales on the Rocks episode as we talked about house parties, Captain Morgan, sales for SEO agencies, all the way down to the meaning of life, and the things that are most dear to us. And Chris Dreyer went on the ride with us.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Jefferson’s Chateau Pichon Baron

What’s in JJ’s glass: E.H. Taylor Single Barrel

What’s in Chris’s glass: Captain Morgan Original Spiced Rum

This Cast Covers:

How Chris got his nickname “Captain Chris” from our mastermind anti-retreat (03:06)
Did Chris really get evicted for throwing huge parties back in Florida? (07:17)
Chris gives us a number of his lifetime poker earnings (08:37)
The difference between a wantrepreneur and an entrepreneur is execution (13:22)
How to filter good ideas from bad ones a.k.a. become a better decision-maker and implementer (15:23)
Why Joey likes making asymmetric bets and what he means by them (17:17)
How Rankings was still able to get referrals and business deals even if their digital marketing on the radio didn’t work out (18:22)
The one thing most agency owners don’t do that keep them from seeing massive growth in their business (19:58)
Three ways you can do fulfillment based on leverage and the pros and cons of each one and why Chris prefers to outsource their SDRs (22:28)
The difference in hiring internal employees, a freelancer, and a vendor or strategic partner (24:24)
When you have leverage on that strategic partner in terms of percentage of their book that you make up or that your clients make up, that really allows you to speak into the process and have more control instead of it being low control, low maintenance (26:26)
How Chris was able to streamline their sales process and focus on sales in 2021 while working with an outsourced model (31:50)
Incremental improvements create exponential growth (33:02)
How Chris is able to make these incremental improvements even in outsourcing (35:55)
Many agency owners and founders completely just give up on outbound because they haven't figured out how to obtain trust in that sales cycle (36:39)
There’s a massive chasm of deal velocity between people who come inbound and people who come through outbound (39:32)
Strategically thinking of ways to set up your strategic partners for success so they can convert at a higher level (40:01)
Core versus context (41:37)
If people would only look at the numbers in their business, e.g. what’s the cost per booked call for your SDRs? (43:31)
What Chris has done in Rankings to successfully differentiate themselves from all the other agencies out there that are selling legal marketing or legal SEO and be able to charge a premium (49:46)
Niching is great, but hyper niching takes it to a whole ‘nother level (51:17)
The best way to improve your win rate is to improve your offer (54:13)
Is Chris fulfilled in this season of his life? Are the things he’s winning at enough? (59:24)
Why Chris enjoys challenges and learning constantly (1:00:36)
The goal is to get to a place in your life where you have optionality (1:07:58)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Rankings.io
How Strategic Alliances Can Skyrocket Your Digital Agency’s Growth featuring Chris Dreyer of Rankings.io

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Colin McGuire is the CEO of Boomn, a leader in eCommerce, building and growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) eCommerce companies through acquisition and strategic partnerships. Colin leads a team of 30 building and growing eCommerce businesses.

He has also been featured in Forbes, Inc Magazine, and many other top publications.

You dreamt, you worked, you achieved your goals. Now what? Having your mind set on the endgame can make you leave out some other things that matter too. Most of the time, it’ll probably be yourself. You’ll become so hyped up on the hustle that you forget to eat properly, move, and simply live outside of your office.

In this episode, Colin McGuire shares his tips on how to start the journey properly and how to not lose yourself in being too hyper-focused on the numbers game.

This Cast Covers:

How Colin became a consultant to many large businesses at 22 years old and ended up acquiring and building his own e-commerce brands (04:49)
Boomn’s evolution from a marketing company of 4 scrappy employees to a leading DTC brand portfolio (7:13)
On balancing work and personal life anchoring Tony Robbins’ quote: “the main pillar of happiness is progress” (12:19)
How you can set better goals for the year to set your agency up for success (23:48)
Why you need two journals - one for work and one for personal use - and a calendar to effectively track your progress (26:40)
On setting goals: money and personal goals (How Joey would handle scenarios in important calls wherein one person in the team is suddenly uncooperative or is not sold (25:53)
If you could work for only 4 hours a week, what would you do? (30:58)
How Colin starts his goal-setting process (31:58)
Don't focus on money, but use it as a tool for measurement (30:00)
The Reticular Activating System (34:00)
Why having a morning or startup routine allows you to win the day everyday (35:47)
Does money make us free? (36:47)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Year Compass Annual Booklet
Follow Colin McGuire on Instagram
Boomn’s website

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Being a business owner or sales leader requires you to always make the right decisions - whether big or small. When you find yourself being cornered by so many questions, when you’re confronted about exclusivity, when you’ve got inaccurate data, or when your subordinates didn’t get it right - you make decisions. In this Sales on the Rocks episode, Joey not only discusses his thought processes regarding these topics but also gives his two cents about being present with your feelings to alleviate anxiety, what’s going on with ‘Cancel Culture,’ and attaining freedom by taking personal ownership over your life.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Spindrift Sparkling Water

What’s in JJ’s glass: Tequila G4 Extra Añejo

This Cast Covers:

Grieving past seasons and being present with your feelings (05:02)
Joey’s perspective on freedom of speech, cancel culture, and unhealthy disagreements (14:12)
Personal ownership: What needs to change when engaging in civil discourses (21:43)
How Joey would handle scenarios in important calls wherein one person in the team is suddenly uncooperative or is not sold (25:53)
Mediating parties, helping them verbalize their opinions, for the purpose of arriving at sound decisions (28:22)
How to practically navigate through overwhelming questions when you’re being cornered (31:01)
Is it a benefit for the agency or for the sales team to have several services to sell rather than one main service? (34:11)
What Joey thinks about exclusivity in terms of offering services to specific sectors of businesses (46:09)
Some of the practical steps to get sales analytics moving in the right direction and how to maneuver data that may or may not be trustworthy (53:12)
The importance of synchronization among the sales team: beginning with sales leaders down to all the salespeople (56:05)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Darren Magarro is the President and Founder of DSM Group, a full-service digital marketing, advertising, and public relations agency based in Northern NJ. He founded DSM Group in 2007 in order to create a full-service marketing agency that puts clients first. He was trained in media strategy and buying during his 7+ years working at many big New York agencies for clients such as Toyota Motor Sales, Verizon Wireless, Boston Beer, and Puma.

DSM is the fastest-growing marketing agency in New Jersey, with a 96% client retention rate, and has proven year after year to be the top full-service marketing agency in the NJ/NYC area.

In this episode, we go beyond sales strategies and growth tactics and cover what legacy we want to leave behind as agency founders. Darren Magarro understands that no business is more important than getting to know the people behind the business and finding that balance between work and life. He also shared some valuable insights on the importance of focusing on building relationships first instead of sales or growth, what people love about working in DSM, and his irrational love for sports teams.

This Cast Covers:

How Darren walked out of the old agency he was working in and decided to start his own 15 years ago (1:40)
Where Darren got his competitive spirit from being obsessed with sports since 12 years old (05:02)
How to have good relationships with clients even if you’re not a natural sales guy (06:58)
Finding a balance between being a founder, brand ambassador, and a good husband and father to his wife and kids I've had an awakening to finding balance (09:08)
What kind of legacy are you leaving when you exit this life? (12:17)
An eye-opening experience Darren had that led him to reconsider how to run his company and treat the people around him (16:39)
Most people nowadays are taking lesser offers at companies where they feel more invested in relationally and why people made a conscious decision to stay in DSM even if they are not necessarily the highest-paying agency (21:49)
Why Darren started Homage as his way of giving back (29:21)
Where DSM mostly attributes a lot of success and growth to (34:36)
Is it a challenge to not have a niche or are there also lots of benefits to not being limited to a specific niche? (36:55)
Areas of improvement Darren and DSM would like to focus on moving forward into 2022 (39:23)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
DSM Group
Connect with Darren Magarro on LinkedIn

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If there’s one area of business that most founders are great at, it’s saying what they want. But the reality is that most agencies are dumbfounded because they can’t fill their pipeline with new leads and deals. They may say they have a sales operation, but their people, processes, and systems are all over the place. In this podcast, Joey and JJ discuss having a solid sales knowledge base, commission structures for referral partners, the slicing pie business model, and the evolution of a sales operation.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Elmer T Lee Single Barrel Mash

This Cast Covers:

How to respond to the objection “This just doesn’t fit our timeline/Now is not the right time to invest”: Should you let it slide or dig in deeper? (07:49)
What’s a sales knowledge base, what’s in it, and why it’s essential to build one for your agency (13:00)
The protocol when it comes to updating your sales knowledge base (17:30)
Is hiring nine new salespeople in a year too aggressive? (19:29)
What commission structures look like for referral partners (25:13)
Why Joey would pay a referral partner more than he pays his salesperson (26:39)
Is there a way you can impact churn positively throughout the sales process? (30:31)
What to do when a company is founded by a handful of people who collectively shared all of the responsibilities (35:21)
The slicing pie model is an extremely fair way of identifying what your slice of pie is worth (37:54)
Should co-founders stick around in a sales leadership or biz dev role or have them all removed from day-to-day leadership positions? (48:05)
The difference between seller discretionary earnings and EBITA-based businesses (48:48)
The evolution of a sales operation (21:02)
What to do when you miss a sales call appointment – can you still salvage a deal like that? (54:33)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Slicing Pie: Funding Your Company Without Funds by Mike Moyer

Slicing Pie: Funding Your Company Without Funds

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Taylor is a real estate investor & business consultant. His companies have serviced over 50,000 individual small businesses in the last 5 years. He is known for Traffic and Funnels, Levels of Wealth, and Wealthcap Holdings.

He is a dynamic & energetic speaker who not only enjoys playing the game of business but teaching it also.

Taylor didn’t grow up wanting to be an entrepreneur. He learned entrepreneurship from his wife. Taylor’s wife was a hairstylist, and he got into marketing because he wanted to help her get more clients, so he could quit his job be a stay-at-home dad basically.

If you aspire to build your wealth, whether that be for yourself or with the intention of passing on a legacy to your children, you are clear about certain levels of wealth. Each level is a step in the ladder of wealth building. In this episode, Taylor Welch shares his methodology around wealth-building and how six, seven, and eight-figure agency owners can take steps to build wealth.

Go here to start your journey on building wealth: https://levelsofwealth.com/system

This Cast Covers:

Taylor gives us a little rundown of what he does, his background, and how he got started in wealth-building (02:33)
What is wealth really and how is it different from being rich? (08:07)
How to create passive income and the cost to live your lifestyle (11:22)
How can people actually start building wealth? (16:47)
Which opportunity should people be grabbing or investing in right now (20:21)
Why Taylor is keen on hopping on the short-term rental development (21:47)
The first step an agency owner pulling in 120-180 grand should start on the roadmap to wealth (25:22)
Why it’s gonna be really difficult for you to start building wealth unless you increase your income (27:09)
The reason wealthy people don’t share their secrets (29:43)
Living off a P& L versus living off a balance sheet (32:00)
We are mostly taught an unhealthy view of money (32:32)
Busting financial planning lies (33:44)
Taylor’s methodology around wealth-building revolves around pumps, buckets, and moats (35:25)
Buckets store capital, grow in value, and pay a yield while your moats are basically your long-term durability (39:34)
Asset classes you might want to be looking at specifically in 2022 (43:39)
Should you have multiple exit strategies and are there any Plan Bs? (47:11)
How you can start learning about multiplying your money and building your wealth (49:13)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Levels of Wealth
The Lifestyle Investor by Justin Donald
Busting the Financial Planning Lies by Kim D.H. Butler
The AND Asset by Caleb Guilliams

Busting the Financial Planning Lies: Learn to Use Prosperity Economics to Build Sustainable Wealth (Busting the Money Myths Book Series)

The Lifestyle Investor: The 10 Commandments of Cash Flow Investing for Passive Income and Financial Freedom

The AND Asset: The Secret Way to Save And Use Your Money at The Same Time

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Michael Scott Cohen is the co-founder of Harper and Scott Inc. that specializes in the custom design and production and fulfillment of branded merchandise and promotional items. Michael with his friend, Jon Alagem founded Harper and Scott to be a more creative, flexible, and responsive player in the crowded business of merchandising. Harper and Scott oversee products from design to delivery, including having a 12-person production operation in China that assures quality and quick turnaround. Harper and Scott was listed in INC 5000 for three consecutive years.

In this episode, Michael Scott Cohen shares how he started Harper and Scott, how he entered the private label branded goods space, why they chose to cover fulfillment as well, how they pivoted their business during the pandemic at a time when so many other companies had great layoffs, and why corporate social responsibility and government sustainability matters so much to them as a corporation.

This Cast Covers:

Who is Michael Cohen Scott and what is Harper and Scott (01:35)
Michael and Joey talk about their favorite Anejo tequila (02:48)
Growing up in Charleston and reading his first sales book Rich Dad, Poor Dad at 12 years old (05:59)
Michael’s background has always been business development (07:50)
The genesis of how Harper and Scott was founded (09:28)
Seeing outdated practices across competitors in the promotional products space back in 2013-2014 (12:33)
What makes Harper and Scott stand out amongst all other agencies in the promotional products space and is part of their unique value proposition (13:59)
How Harper and Scott was able to pivot their company and create new revenue streams during the pandemic that enabled them to not let go of any of their employees (17:15)
Why it has always been about growth over at Harper and Scott (23:10)
What is a B corporation and why invest in sustainability? (27:24)
How Harper and Scott educate their clients about how their products are manufactured - right from the procurement of raw materials to packaging and distribution and how they can leave a lasting impact (29:20)
Michael’s view on handling minority-owned businesses and still being profitable in this world of capitalism and meritocracy (32:14)
Harper and Scott’s challenge that they're addressing in 2022 (33:31)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Harper and Scott
Michael Scott Cohen on LinkedIn

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In this Sales on the Rocks episode, we discuss SDR comp models, how to handle the ‘not enough case studies and experience’ objection, pros and cons of building a personal brand versus a company brand, when to get out of sales, and the one question to ask yourself if you’ve been thinking about scaling your business.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Redbreast 12-Year Old Single Pot Still Irish whiskey

What’s in JJ’s glass: E.H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel Straight Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Pulling the trigger on buying a firearm: Joey weighs in on gun safety (05:27)
JJ dips his toes into self-defense and home defense (11:00)
Objection handling 101 – How to handle an objection when prospects say you don’t have enough case studies, experience, or time in the space? (12:49)
Selling to friends: is it a terrific or horrible idea? (18:05)
When should you start thinking about getting out of sales? (22:43)
Joey and JJ give a sneak peek of the offer that’s in the works for founder-based sellers (26:07)
SDR compensation models (30:30)
Weighing in on Alex Hormozi’s concept of minimum viable unit price per project - does this make sense for outbound sales (36:10)
What you should be pricing your services per engagement (38:09)
Should agency owners or founders focus on building a personal brand or their company brand? (42:41)
Guess who’s joining us on the Sales on the Rocks podcast next week (48:14)
Whatever your foot in the door offer is, it should be focused on solving your prospects’ “bleeding neck” problems (50:02)
Why having a gateway or foot in the door offer is important (52:06)
Joey reflects on whether to keep his agency as a lifestyle business or grow it into an enterprise (54:12)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Scott Anderson is the founder and CEO of DoubleDare, a company that offers coaching programs for agency owners or business leaders who dream to achieve next-level success. Scott has about more than 30 years of experience where he owned and ran eight businesses, launched four for-profit and two not-for-profit companies. Not only is he an experienced entrepreneur, but is also a licensed therapist with a Masters's degree in Clinical Counseling. His passion is to help entrepreneurs recapture and fully live their unique talent, passion, and purpose and take their businesses to the next level.

In this episode, Scott talks about the often brushed-off and neglected ‘feeling’ that entrepreneurs experience every once in a while: burnout. As business people who tend to always be on the go, do exciting things and deal with nerve-wracking decisions, it is extremely difficult to take a pause – especially when the exhaustion goes beyond the body and into the brain. When everything feels draining, what must you do? What must you think of? What must you feel? Is there still hope to break free from this? These are some of the questions Scott and I attempt to answer and recount as we also share our fair amount of burnt out stories.

This Cast Covers:

What Scott does and what his credentials are (01:19)
How entrepreneurs, agency owners and clients are prone to burnout (02:45)
The actual definition of ‘burnout’ and how it is used in today’s culture (08:58)
Three characteristics and some symptoms of burnout (09:51)
Wrongly avoiding stressors and turning to (seemingly harmless) addictions nowadays (16:51)
What Scott would advise to people feeling burnt out (23:08)
The five basic counterintuitive shifts when experiencing burnout (27:54)
The principle that Joey has held on to especially during overwhelming and stressful situations (28:42)
The discipline (and corresponding struggle) of taking a break as entrepreneurs (34:24)
Questions you need to ask yourself when feeling burned out or frustrated about problems you cannot solve (39:56)
How much investing in a proven system – having a mentor or a coach – has done for Joey’s growth as an entrepreneur and an individual in general (39:56)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
LinkedIn | Scott Anderson
LinkedIn | Doubledare Executive Business Coaching, Consultation & Search
Website | Doubledare Executive Business Coaching, Consultation & Search

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Have you heard of doomer optimism? We barely touch the surface of this topic on this episode, but we go deep into sales psychology – leveraging emotions, the law of reciprocity, giving away value for free, and building trust with your prospects to view you as an expert in your field. Joey gives solid advice for agency owners struggling to get out of the sales seat, and JJ shares a phenomenon he notices happening in our society today and what he plans to do about it.

This Cast Covers:

What is doomer optimism and what do people (a.k.a. JJ) need to know about it? (03:46)
The law of reciprocity and how that applies in sales (18:50)
Can generosity be a sales tactic? (21:23)
How to leverage prospects’ emotions to push them forward in the sales cycle (24:03)
The difference between an impulsive decision brought by emotion and dragging someone through the glass (25:54)
How to demonstrate authority and build confidence in your prospects to trust that you are an expert throughout the sales process (29:01)
What kind of things can younger and less experienced salespeople do early on in their sales career? (29:27)
How Joey feels about other agencies killing it in the inbound marketing and inbound game (34:35)
The first step for an agency owner if he wants to move out of day-to-day sales (40:01)
Things to keep in mind as we move into a more individualistic society (47:01)
Creating space for relationships and creating space to think (48:43)
JJ’s top three takeaways from this SOTR episode (51:59)
Being able to be quiet and still (56:00)
JJ and Joey share a proud father moment (57:40)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Spence Hackney is the president of Proclaim Interactive, an interactive think out of the box full-service digital marketing agency providing website design, mobile app development, and search engine optimization. Established in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1999, their team full of smart professionals are rip-roaring and ready to bring you more clients, patients, supporters, and sales.

Spence also serves on the board of First Fruit Ministries, Alpha Ministries, and is a leader in Cub Scout Pack 226.

In this episode, Spence shares how Proclaim Interactive started in 1999, the triumphs and challenges they’ve faced as an agency, acquisition structure, and how faith has a huge role to play in directing both Spence and Joey’s paths as not just agency owners but also stewards of God’s creation.

This Cast Covers:

How Proclaim Interactive started in 1999 and a little background who is Spence (00:59)
Is the agency world in very unprecedented times or is it just experiencing another shift in terms of maintaining a great culture despite everything being virtual nowadays? (02:03)
The stuff 12-year-old Spence was into and what it’s like growing up on a farm (03:28)
What kind of specific niche Proclaim Interactive really honing in on (07:05)
The method behind the agency’s growth through word of mouth and referrals and if it has always been purely organic (08:55)
Joey’s approach on getting referrals which any agency owner can implement to their onboarding process (10:37)
How Proclaim Interactive has gone about doing acquisitions and what they learned from it so far (13:17)
Spence gets real and talks about how his faith has impacted his work (15:35)
Joey talks about his former difficult relationship with wealth and work as a Christian (15:46)
How the book The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn rocked Spence’s world and his view of agency life (17:21)
How to adapt to building and maintaining company culture virtually(25:12)
The number one topic agency owners are trying to figure out right now: retaining talent (26:32)
Spence’s advice to agency owners on the one thing they should focus on in their agency that will move the needle for them bigtime in 2022 (29:58)
A challenge that Spence is facing and working on today in terms of leading the agency (32:39)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Proclaim Interactive
The Treasure Principle: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving by Randy Alcorn

The Treasure Principle, Revised and Updated: Unlocking the Secret of Joyful Giving

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In this podcast, we are joined all the way from Dallas, Texas by co-founders of Valynt Digital and the co-hosts of The Digital Dive Podcast, Dan Spottsville and Chris Mathew. We talk about cryptos, NFTs, metaverse, marketing, and inbound sales in the agency space. Dan and Chris share what they’ve built working together, what’s currently working really well for them in terms of lead generation and qualifying those leads, what they hope their agency will be able to accomplish in the near future.

This Cast Covers:

Chris and Dan talk about how they got connected and built Valynt Digital together (02:34)
The best kind of client testimonial Dan received was being invited as Chris’s business partner (07:27)
How they strategically plan the prospect-buyer journey to be batting a thousand in the agency space (09:12)
Setting client expectations and focusing on the right niches (10:24)
Why radical transparency is greatly valued at Valynt Digital (13:25)
The freedom that comes with having an exploding pipeline (14:29)
Having an inbound strategy that’s so solid their partner has never needed to make an outbound call ever (17:00)
Why courtship is something they subscribe to in their marketing and inbound sales strategy (19:14)
Why most marketing agencies really struggle to effectively market themselves and drive inbound leads (21:01)
The pros and cons of marketing and sales and why Joey would fight to the death to have a team of SDRs than spend his money on ad spend (22:03)
A way to court your prospect through an outbound sales process combining marketing with sales (24:02)
How Joey, JJ, and Dan are all doing with the 75 Hard challenge (30:58)
How both Chris and Dan function and coexist in leadership even while wearing a lot of hats (32:34)
There's no shortcut for experience (33:35)
How to work towards a business and life that gives you true freedom (34:43)
Why you as the business leader should figure out a way to get out of your spot so you can have the optionality to work on the business and not be limited by it (37:07)
How hard or easy was it for Joey to cross off 22 items that weren’t necessary for him to do? (38:30)
What Chris and Dan find themselves doing in the company versus what they really love to do (40:41)
Their hopes and long-term vision for the agency (45:57)
Futurecasting an org chart and reverse engineering that vision (50:32)
Dream your dream life (54:08)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Valynt Digital
The Digital Dive Podcast

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Erik Huberman is the founder and CEO of Hawke Media, a full-service Outsourced CMO based in Santa Monica, CA, providing guidance, planning, and execution to grow brands of all sizes, industries, and business models. Hawke Media was recognized by Inc. as the country's fastest-growing marketing consultancy, and is proudly one of Glassdoor's "Best Places to Work", 2019 #893 on the Forbes 5000 list, UpCity Top Los Angeles Digital Marketing Agency,

As a serial entrepreneur and marketing expert, Huberman is a sought-after thought leader in the world of digital marketing, entrepreneurship, sales and business. Prior to Hawke, he founded, grew and sold two successful ecommerce companies. Huberman is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including Forbes “30Under30,” CSQ “40Under40”, Inc. Magazine’s “Top 25 Marketing Influencers,” and Best in Biz North America’s “Marketing Executive of the Year.” A regular contributor to major publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, and CSQ, Huberman is also a well-known keynote speaker.

He is also the author of The Hawke Method: The Three Principles of Marketing that Made Over 3,000 Brands Soar.

For the first 20 people who purchase the book, send me an email with a screenshot of your purchase to podcast@bestdamnagency.co and I will invite you to a private, exclusive 2-hour session with me to help you stand up your sales systems.

This Cast Covers:

How Hawke Media started doing acquisitions and closing their 7th and 8th acquisitions very recently (03:08)
The pivotal moment where Erik realized he no longer wanted a lifestyle business and build something much, much bigger, and more powerful (09:45)
Erik getting out of the sales cockpit seat even if there was a very noticeable dip in revenue for two months (11:53)
Why you need to invest in your leaders if you want to see massive growth in your agency (14:37)
Freedom is being able to do all the cool things, both personally and professionally (17:31)
How Erik and his partner at Hawke Media figured out how to grow and scale the agency in a more sustainable fashion (18:36)
The genius in paying your employees to take a one-week vacation every year (20:10)
Erik explains The Hawke Method and why he and his team created the book (21:58)
Freedom comes when you don't live a life off P&L, but you live a life off a balance sheet (25:21)
Erik’s advice on wealth building for agency owners that you probably don’t want but need to hear (26:00)
Why you’re better off reinvesting in assets and living below your P&L (29:30)
How Erik got to the point where he has a very stable, cash-flowing business that has no outside capital, no debt by simply reinvesting in assets and living below his P&L (29:30)
Joey’s wealth-building strategy starts with knowing what’s your burn rate and looking at five buckets of investing (33:10)
Why now is not the right time to be sitting on cash due to the industrial inflation rate (34:20)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Erik Huberman
Hawke Media
Purchase a copy of The Hawke Method here

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Tyler Sickmeyer is the Founder of Fidelitas Development, a full-service marketing, advertising, and public relations agency that helps clients build brand loyalty through intentional storytelling. They serve a variety of clients in the retail, direct to consumer, eCommerce, luxury, and sporting goods industries.

Aside from consulting clients on marketing strategy and ROI measurement, Tyler serves on the board of Live Ventures (NASDAQ: LIVE) and is a sought-after keynote speaker delivering high-energy keynote presentations to audiences across the United States.

He is also the founder of The Lion's Share Marketing Podcast, which offers a wide range of topics from Customer Acquisition Strategies and eCommerce best practices to the latest trends in marketing and communications.

Tyler now lives in San Diego with his wife, two sons, and yellow lab, after moving from Illinois.

This Cast Covers:

Why COVID was good to those who are good business people (02:47)
How Tyler started out as the youngest Christian concert promoter in the nation to transition into becoming an agency owner from scratch (06:28)
Joey and Tyler talk about famous Christian artists and Tyler shares something her will never forget from meeting TobyMac (10:00)
How Fidelitas Development discovered the niche industry they were gonna work with and what skill they wanted to focus their outbound efforts on (13:26)
What drives growth to the agency predominantly – outbound, inbound, referrals, networks, speaking engagements, or a combination of all? (18:43)
Why it’s important to diversify strategies so that you’re perpetually filling up your pipeline (19:52)
What Tyler’s day-to-day currently looks like as a CEO and founder of his agency (27:03)
Where he foresees Fidelitas Development going in the long term and the steps they’re taking to get there (28:12)
A gamechanger that allows you to set up subscription billing for your clients so you never have to chase invoices ever again (29:47)
The prerequisite to having a successful business: building a great culture (32:28)
What Tyler and Fidelitas Development have been heavily investing in over the last several months and are looking forward to reaping the rewards in Q1 (33:54)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Tyler Sickmeyer
Fidelitas Development
Tyler Sickmeyer on Twitter

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Dreaming big will never equate to doing big. You might have started the year full of dreams and visions you want to achieve for yourself and your business, but that’ll take you nowhere if you could not fulfill the actions required. Consequently, you wouldn’t be able to do the actions required if you’ve got a clouded and weak mindset. Too many agency owners and business leaders get stuck on wanting the best for their businesses, but can’t get there just because they took the wrong next steps leading their businesses.

In this episode of Sales on the Rocks, join us as we talk about the difference between confidence and cockiness, the long but necessary process of setting realistic goals, what makes a sales operation successful, prioritizing revenue and growth before fulfillment, leading inbound and outbound sales, onboarding salespeople effectively, and Joey’s exceptional ‘one-liner’ ability.

This Cast Covers:

The difference between confidence and cockiness (04:58)
What setting goals for the new year looks like for Joey (09:48)
The 3 pillars of a good sales operation that agencies must look into first before jumping into it (17:18)
Whether Joey gets sick of persuading agency owners and CEOs to invest in sales (29:40)
Joey’s advice to agency owners stuck on the trivialities and can’t grow their agency (31:53)
What possibly hinders an agency from leading the outbound sales (35:30)
How Joey starts his outbound calls and how he keeps the prospect engaged (38:44)
How to approach the sales process or inbound sales (40:59)
What a quality onboarding process should look like (42:51)
How to transition taking and handling calls to the salesperson he is training (48:17)
How Joey became so good at dropping those ‘one-liners’ that largely help to get into their prospects (50:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Ben LeDonni is the CEO of Creative MMS, a digital marketing agency based in Greater Philadelphia, that describes itself as no less than creative, analytical, and strategic. The agency was founded over fifteen years ago to create and deliver the best-performing B2B digital marketing services and is now a leading strategic digital marketing agency. Outside the career-guy character in suit and tie, Ben is also a loving husband and father of three wonderful children. He and his wife, Kelly, started a nongovernmental organization named the Gigi Project, that aimed to give back and provide support to families and others who needed help in health, education, income, and dignity.

In this episode, Ben LeDonni delves into what kind of culture they were able to build inside the company and outside with their clients – a culture that was transparent, understanding, and most importantly, empowering. He shares how not only financial growth is the measure of success, but also expertise, or what the whole team was able to learn through the processes they encountered. It was important for them to be confident in their expertise and on what they believed as this would then dictate what their future actions were. Furthermore, he shares what it was like to be a leader of a company in the midst of the pandemic and how relationships or personal connection within and outside the company is what really matters.

This Cast Covers:

How Ben and Creative MMS have quickly adapted to COVID (04:55)
The biggest challenge Ben faced as the CEO when COVID hit (05:13)
What leadership in the company looked like for Ben for the past two years (06:53)
How empathy is one of the most important characteristics of a leader in Ben’s perspective (09:58)
Ben’s take on ‘The Great Resignation’ and how the culture in their company greatly helped them handle it well (12:48)
Finance and expertise as the two important aspects of the company that Ben uses as a gauge for growth (18:52)
How Creative MMS has been growing from sixteen people (23:47)
How Creative MMS finds opportunities to grow an account and practical strategies in executing them (28:56)
The areas where Creative MMS are struggling/struggled with and how they addressed them (33:21)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
LinkedIn | Ben LeDonni
The Creative MMS
Creative University
The Gigi Project

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In this episode, you’ll learn how to sell more by focusing less on your or your prospects’ emotions and more on providing value for them. Find out what makes a great SDR, closer, or sales leader, and why you shouldn’t base your identity on outcomes or things that are fleeting. JJ loses his cool because of something Joey says, Joey recalls that time he pissed off a prospect, and JJ shares his journey on conquering limiting beliefs.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Pinhook Vertical Series 6 Year "Bourbon War" Bourbon

What’s in JJ’s glass: Company Distilling Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished With Maple Wood

This Cast Covers:

Joey’s big surprise for JJ over the weekend (02:24)
Hustle and drive versus experience and skill – which weigh heavier in any sales leadership position? (06:44)
SDA’s business model is quite different from most sales agencies wherein the closers also get sales assistants (11:05)
Is it necessary to be building relationships with every prospect you meet to become successful at sales as an agency owner? (12:59)
How the DISC assessment can be used to find out which type of sales role you can excel in (14:47)
A way to build genuine authentic relationships in your sales calls (15:33)
Joey explains why he never hands out references to any of his prospects and why you shouldn’t too (18:47)
Maintaining company culture in the digital workplace and why you need to know this when creating systems or processes, building a team, or vetting candidates for any role (23:48)
Creating an echo chamber for yourself (27:27)
Giving your team the space to be individually different, but you must share an alignment on the core values (30:00)
How to personally separate your self-worth from the outcomes you have in business (33:11)
Joey talks about why his faith is super important and why he finds his identity in Christ (35:20)
JJ’s journey struggling with limiting beliefs and how he was able to conquer them (08:58)
Remember this if you are your biggest critic (42:48)
JJ’s biggest goal for 2022 and how he plans to achieve it (45:10)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Neil Bedwell is a founding partner of LOCAL, a Change Marketing agency located in Atlanta, Georgia that creates people-first communication programs for some of the world's best companies, such as Coca-Cola, Google, and Procter & Gamble. Prior to launching LOCAL, Neil first led digital strategy and content for Coca-Cola's Global Content Excellence group. Today, with 20 years of experience working inside some of the world's best companies, Neil shares his advocacy for an employee-first approach to corporate change to multiple start-ups, HR, Marketing, and Transformation events as a regular keynote speaker and General Assembly Instructor.

In this episode, Neil humbly but proudly shares LOCAL’s unique Change Marketing approach to people and transformation leaders looking to navigate culture successfully. In particular, he shares how important it is to invest in people genuinely and empower them to work on what they love to do, not just what they can do because he believes that this is the best way they could serve the company. More than this, Neil imparts to us in this episode the vision of what a company would look like with single-minded and inspired employer-employee relationships.

This Cast Covers:

How Neil thought that ‘The Great Resignation’ must be ‘The Great Realization’ and the actual reasons why people work (03:37)
What most employers fail to do for their employees and how they can improve on it (06:52)
How today’s human resources might have been affected by the Industrial Revolution ‘factory-type system’ on people (12:25)
Trust and value as the two most important ways to create an exciting culture amongst your employees (25:40)
How recognition of employees became an undervalued thing nowadays (26:20)
The original definition of the word ‘company’ and how it must be lived out (28:30)
Listening to consumers’ and employees’ needs and adopting a people-first environment as two of the best cultures Neil has started seeing in companies (31:30)
What must be taken into account when pitching an idea to your team as an employer (40:54)
Why it is important to make your employees the first audience of every marketing plan and not just leave them out of the process (45:55)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
LinkedIn | Neil Bedwell
LOCAL | Change Marketing Agency

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Today’s sales teams operate in an incredibly competitive environment. If you’re a founder-based seller and looking to transition into hiring sales leaders, it’s your job to provide guidance and support so that your sales teams can best serve your clients and reach company goals. To do so, you need to understand what it takes to cultivate sales team culture for sales reps and then adapt accordingly.

We’re breaking down the similarities and differences in cultivating team culture between corporate sales teams and smaller $1-20 million agencies. Also, Joey is hiring an SDR for his company! Find out if you’re the one he’s looking for.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Jefferson's Grand Selection 'Chateau Pichon Baron French Oak Cask Finish' Straight Bourbon Whiskey

What’s in JJ’s glass: Michter’s Kentucky Straight Rye

This Cast Covers:

Shows Joey likes to watch in his free time from Alex Hormozi to comedians talking about UFC MMA stuff (02:52)
If you’re easily offended, you’re probably not the salesperson Joey’s looking for (06:56)
The funny story of how Joey found out that doing digital marketing isn’t the same as selling digital marketing (08:07)
Similarities and differences between a corporate sales environment and sales teams of smaller $1-20 million agencies (13:38)
What type of meetings happens at the start of every workday or week at bigger sales companies? (17:48)
Is it good to introduce healthy competition into your sales team culture for smaller agencies? (20:01)
Figuring out how many touchpoints you need with your sales reps depending on your agency structure and how many layers you have in your agency (21:22)
What Joey is specifically looking for in a salesperson/closer (22:42)
Why Joey thinks he’s better off working “above” SDA rather than in it (27:33)
How long before Joey decides to fire a salesperson after seeing they just aren’t cut out for the SDR role? (28:00)
How much should you think through current or potential future economic landscapes before allowing it to inform the way you’re projecting your company out? (30:00)
Why we love to create a proforma for every client we take on before we start working with them (32:34)
Different ways you can pull the lever on future projections (35:01)
JJ is offering to give 2-3 badass agency owners to join the trip and see for themselves if this is for you or not (38:39)
How much should your cost per acquisition be to forecast what you could spend on generating leads or should you work backward? (39:36)
Why the “one to many” or “fishing with nets approach” works for agencies like SDR versus “fishing with spears” (45:13)
Joey’s favorite and least favorite parts of sales (47:57)
The one thing Joey hates when doing sales that’s pretty much inevitable but still gets on his nerves every time (50:56)
Does Joey have any rituals before jumping into sales calls? (52:23)
How to deal with people ripping your stuff a.k.a. copycats (54:13)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Alex Hormozi
This Past Weekend with Theo Von
King and the Sting with Theo Von and Brendan Schaub
Congratulations Podcast with Chris D’Elia

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Joe McFerrin is the CEO of IWD Agency, a full-service e-commerce agency specializing in building & optimizing amazing eCommerce brands on Adobe Commerce (Magento), Shopify, Woocommerce & Bigcommerce. After spending a number of years growing in Baton Rouge, Joe took his company to Austin, TX, as he believes it’s Silicon Valley 2.0. For the past 6 years, the agency has been among the 100 fastest-growing LSU graduate-owned companies.

In this episode, Joe shares his journey from being a young kid interested in tech to starting a company as a hobby and then growing that company to 50 employees in the past 12 years. He also shares the greatest contributor to their growth, why he chooses to promote internally and train them to be leaders of their own teams, and something he wished he knew back when his agency was just starting out and achieving its first million.

This Cast Covers:

What Joe McFerrin was like as a 12–year-old rugrat working a bunch of jobs until college and starting the agency as a hobby (04:50)
The moment Joe decided IWD Agency was gonna niche down to just e-commerce brands and companies (06:54)
How Joe applies the 80:20 principle in the business, but also in his role as a founder and CEO (08:42)
You really start progressing in business when you do multiple levels of the 80:20 principle (09:45)
How IWD Agency has grown through organic, word of mouth, and referrals (13:20)
The next goals for IWD Agency in the coming years and how Joe plans to reverse engineer those goals (16:36)
How to combat shrinking profit margins as your agency grows (18:19)
Why you should take care of your people and get better at managing them, keeping them engaged, motivated and happy (22:33)
Joe shares some things he wants to improve in the coming months or years (26:03)
One of the largest challenges in running businesses is leading and cultivating leaders (27:15)
How it feels to see your team grow into leaders in their own right (28:46)
What advice would Joe give himself five years ago after cracking the first millionth mark or mid-six figures (29:57)
How to recruit and retain your employees especially with everyone working in a remote environment (32:32)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
IWD Agency
IWD Agency on YouTube
Runners Athletics

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Having difficulties coming up with some decisions that may or may not be critical in your leadership as an agency/business owner? Are you not that content with how your business is going? You probably have some reflection to do. As 2022 is fast approaching, it is the perfect time to do some self-reflection and realization about what went down in the past year of 2021. The good and the bad, the things to forget and things to keep, the things to improve on and the things to stop doing – as an agency or business owner.

In this episode of Sales on the Rocks, get ready for yet another ‘intoxicated, unfiltered, unscripted conversation about all things agency and sales.’ Join us as we talk about wise and practical decisions as an agency or business owner getting leads, running campaigns, and leading your own people.

What’s in Joey’s Glass: Caribou Crossing Single Barrel Canadian Whiskey

What’s in JJ’s Glass: Blade and Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Whether Joey’s personal life is as structured, systematized, and efficient as his career life (04:02)
The best thing that Joey was given as a prospecting attempt to get his business (08:25)
What Joey thinks is the gap between what clients need and what they really want (13:31)
The top 3 things that Joey considers when starting up a campaign (18:18)
How Joey practically runs and gauges his campaigns (25:39)
What it’s like to be a part of The Best Damn Agency Mastermind (29:23)
Does delegation of responsibilities to your team (or getting out of their way and leaving things in their hands) also apply to the sales context? (33:07)
How Joey divides up opportunities for his salespeople in a way that is both strategic and also empowering (38:40)
The one thing that Joey really wants but can’t afford yet (46:32)
How Joey thinks The Best Damn Agency Podcast is going so far and what he wants to see, change, or improve in the near future (50:08)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Andrew Morgans is the founder and CEO of Marknology, a full-service Amazon Brand Accelerator with a proven selling system for launching products on all e-commerce platforms with remarkable results. They have worked with over 300 global brands and managed sales of over $500 million, including Adidas, Marvel, Arrojo NY, Nylabone, Guardian Bikes, and Swiss.

In this episode, Andrew talks about what his diverse living experiences in Africa taught him about wealth, happiness, and entrepreneurship. We also dive into having a solid support system around you to help you achieve your impossible goals, what he thinks about the current hustle culture today, and the power of manifestation.

This Cast Covers:

The story behind how Marknology got its name (01:15)
Andrew’s childhood as a missionary kid living in Africa and how he became the agency owner he is today (02:45)
The greatest story Andrew knows of entrepreneurship (06:35)
How do you balance knowing that money isn’t the end goal but also desiring to not be poor (09:46)
Wealth and money are only a reflection of what is already inside (11:58)
One of Andrew’s biggest lows was achieving a goal (16:29)
It's not about the destination (18:36)
What is the “Why” Andrew is working towards? (20:09)
Joey and Andrew’s thoughts on the hustle culture and creating “balance” (24:38)
Circumstances when you need to be extreme and go “all in” (25:59)
Intentionally building your support system and having a solid support system around you (28:52)
Andrew’s secret weapon which most Americans aren’t very good at (25:41)
His beliefs around manifestation (38:58)
Why it’s so important to have a group of like-minded people around you working towards the same goals and have the same mindset (44:39)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Marknology

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Sales DNA – you either have it or you don’t. Is this really the case? Or are there other factors you can consider when hiring a salesperson? In this episode, we talk about sales rep DNA, why we always prefer attitude over aptitude, our lessons and experiences in the year 2021, and our plans for 2022. We also came up with some questions to help you reflect on your personal, business, or family life.

This Cast Covers:

How to reset yourself when shit hits the fan (02:24)
Momentum is the most powerful force on the planet (05:06)
What would Joey do if his plans for Sales Driven Agency or the Best Damn Agency Mastermind never panned out? (07:43)
Some holiday traditions Joey and JJ find enjoyable and actually care about (09:16)
Why JJ likes Thanksgiving more than Christmas (11:38)
Start with pain and end with pleasure (14:45)
What it means to drag someone through the glass (17:12)
Sales rep DNA (20:38)
Why Joey always chooses attitude over aptitude in his sales reps (23:27)
A good question to ask yourself for self-reflection or even when you're vetting potential employees (24:40)
What you should be working into all of your interview processes (25:22)
How to balance training for the role that you're currently in versus the larger scale, macro leadership development (27:28)
Why self-awareness can turn into self-limiting very quickly (31:41)
How to take every lesson you learned in 2021 to hit the ground running in 2022 (36:16)
Three questions for self-reflection to prepare for 2022 (37:49)
Why you should be creating space on or before the end of this year to be by yourself, have some quiet and reflect (39:27)
The Rothschild method for anyone wanting to create some type of offer to get more deals at the end of this year (41:31)
What is Joey most proud of this year and what is his biggest takeaway heading into 2022? (51:01)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Dan Spottsville is the CEO and Co-Founder of Valynt Digital. He's been running digital campaigns for 12 years and by many is considered a "go-to person" when it comes to raising capital using digital marketing for Reg A, Reg D, and Reg CF offerings. Recently, he successfully helped raise $50 million dollars for an ammunition company and $1.8 million for an aviation company through the crowdfunding platform, “WeFunder."

His understanding of business and digital marketing has allowed him to create custom digital funnels that are applicable to many industries. His track record of success in generating results can be found in healthcare, non-profit, entertainment, and the energy sector. He is an early adopter, innovator, and creative at heart who takes a company's vision and fast tracks them to achieving their goal through digital marketing

In this episode, Dan shares how he got into the capital raising space, what it’s like working with nonprofits, churches, and other organizations looking for accredited investors, his shared interest with Joey in NFTs, the challenges Valynt Digital faced during the pandemic, how they were able to overcome those, and finally, where Valynt Digital is headed to in the future.

This Cast Covers:

How and why Dan formed Valynt Digital and decided to niche down into nonprofits and capital raises (02:50)
Dan walks us through what capital raising is, what types of people do capital raising, and what it looks like (05:02)
How they got to work with accredited investors and how they found these ultra-high net worth investors in some cases (07:23)
The role of digital marketing in targeting accredited investors (09:05)
How Dan and Valynt Digital built their own database of accredited investors (11:11)
Where does one start in marketing if they want to build potential investors in a fund? (14:40)
The biggest mistake any marketer makes for every lead generation campaign (15:42)
The most important rule when raising capital online (16:38)
What should an appropriate call to action look like in creating lead generation campaigns for nonprofits? (18:23)
How does Valynt Digital grow as an agency — organic, inbound, paid, referrals and network, or outbound sales? (21:08)
An extra step they added in vetting qualified leads that make a huge difference (22:21)
You should be implementing “seeding” all throughout your sales process (23:00)
How to compute your exponential revenue growth formula (24:43)
The idea of creating an NFT around a community as a viable model (28:17)
Insane use cases for NFT's being applied to nonprofits and churches nowadays (31:29)
Why NFTs are gonna be big in the next couple of months (32:13)
Where most ads will be run in the very near future and why you should be preparing for it (34:10)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Valynt Digital
Dan Spottsville on Linkedin
The Digital Dive on YouTube

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Do you want to stay ahead of the game in a down economy? We know how hard it is to keep up with everything that’s going on. That’s why in this episode, we talk about the three things you need to do to keep yourself and your business afloat even when things are about to get ugly. We also go over some Linkedin posts related to sales and marketing and give our unabashed opinions on getting your kids vaccinated, how to incentivize your sales reps, and why you should focus on building out your sales operation first before trying out the next big thing in marketing.

This Cast Covers:

What Joey thinks about parents who let their seven and eight-year-old kids get vaxxed with the COVID-19 vaccine (06:03)
Why we argue that building your sales operation first more important than building brand awareness and generating leads (16:16)
A sales process does not equal using an automated platform, rather it is a systematized way of keeping your finger on every lead (18:15)
The one thing you’re probably not doing causing you to have a leaky pipeline of leads (19:31)
How to more efficiently convert marketing qualified leads (MQL) to sales qualified leads (SQL) and how to increase conversion rates? (21:45)
The process of weeding out the unqualified marketing or sales leads (26:07)
How Joey spent 30 grand on an offer even though he was just an MQL because the company’s follow-up was amazing (27:43)
Joey’s thoughts on sales rep-directed incentivization structure – allowing your sales reps to develop their own goals and incentives (32:40)
Why people who say they’d rather buy from a friend than a complete stranger are B.S. (38:24)
Buying from someone who I trust to solve a problem than someone who I don't trust to solve a problem is just basic business sense (40:30)
What people need to start thinking through now that the end is near (42:15)
Three things you have to do today to prepare for tomorrow when things are not as pretty (46:23)
Why if you’re operating under a 30% margin, you’re gonna struggle on a down market (49:04)
Finding the balance between delivering for clients and maintaining a solid stance of profitability (49:52)
Having a systematic way of driving leads, working leads, closing leads, and getting paid (50:24)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Scott Scully is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a B2B lead generation company and business growth agency based in St. Louis, Missouri. For the last 12 years, they have been helping small to medium-sized businesses grow through outbound lead generation, marketing services, and Salesforce consulting.

In this episode, Scott shares how he helps businesses solve one of their biggest challenges to growth, which is building and maintaining a consistent, predictable sales pipeline; as well as growing into his role as a CEO and his own experience in acquisitions.

This Cast Covers:

How Abstrakt started and how they’ve grown to $27million in revenue and 550 people (05:03)
The specific target markets Scott and Abstract Marketing Group serve and how they do sales enablement (06:27)
How long Scott has been into acquisitions and was it a strategic move or unplanned (11:07)
Joey reveals one of his bigger picture goals (13:45)
Leading with sales is the greatest value you can bring to someone else’s company or agency (16:50)
Scott’s advice for those who are maybe stuck wearing too many hats and yet struggle to wear the CEO hat of their company (18:54)
Taking some time to look at your future organization chart and strategize roles and responsibilities (22:08)
How Abstrakt manages to fight the battle against their employees being poached by companies from the West and East Coast (25:36)
What Scott and the leadership at Abstrakt has created in order to attract and keep good talent (26:12)
A daily startup and shutdown routine for accountability but also for granting more personal freedoms (28:40)
What’s next for Scott and for Abstrakt Marketing Group? (30:40)
Caring about the human as a whole and not just looking at his role as a CEO (33:09)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Abstrakt Marketing Group
Scott Scully on Linkedin

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In this episode, we talk about why you are making the mistake of focusing on content marketing before focusing on sales. While it’s a really worthwhile strategy to invest in, we recommend that you do not make it your main focus and prioritize sales instead. We also talk about wealth building, why your network is your net worth, strategic partnerships, and the four disciplines of execution.

This Cast Covers:

The greatest use of your time in moneymaking (02:37)
How to handle the FOMO of wanting to invest in all kinds of things
What Joey learned from his fractional financial officer on wealth-building (04:34)
What is infinite banking and why is it an incredible tool you should check out? (07:03)
Entrepreneurship vs. intrapreneurship; and why salespeople are the closest you can get to becoming an entrepreneur (15:38)
Should salespeople build their own personal brand or try entering into thought leadership? (17:56)
Which should weigh more, sales or content marketing? (23:23)
Why having a solid audience makes it so much easier to sell (25:54)
How to uplevel your network, a.k.a. why if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room (33:26)
Just be the kid who invites the cool kids to the party (35:59)
Is Joey a fan of strategic partnerships that are centered around someone white labeling and selling your service for him? (41:03)
The 4 disciplines of execution Joey excels at and naturally struggles with (45:00)
The top two things that lead to the lack of success in all aspects of life (46:00)
How to navigate the whirlwind of agency life while also mitigating the risks (47:12)
Control the chaos and still focus on the things that really matter amidst the chaos (48:19)
Something you can add to your shutdown routine that has been proven very helpful for JJ (50:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
The 4 Disciplines of Execution

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Shama Hyder is the award-winning CEO of Zen Media – a global marketing and digital PR firm which helps both B2B and B2C brands to make meaningful connections with the modern-day customer via influencer marketing, experiential and digital storytelling — and then turning those into bottom-line results. Notable clients include Chase Business, The US Navy, DFW Airport, MaryKay, and Tupperware.

She is the bestselling author of The Zen of Social Media Marketing, now in its 4th edition and Momentum: How to Propel Your Marketing and Transform Your Brand in the Digital Age, and an acclaimed keynote speaker delivering keynotes in over 20 countries.

In this episode, Shama walks us through how she started her own marketing firm at the age of 22, why Twitter is the best thought leadership platform for agency owners right now, what she considers her high-impact activities (one of which has nothing to do with being an entrepreneur), and where Zen Media is headed in the future.

This Cast Covers:

What Zen Media has been doing and crushing it in the past 15 years and why they chose to work specifically in the B2B space (03:44)
The shift of focus surrounding PR from just talking about the company to thought leadership and the CEOs or founders of the companies (06:44)
Why companies who have thought leadership are doing really well in today’s climate (07:17)
Why you should get on Twitter if you’re an agency founder or owner right now (08:18)
The main thing that led to Zen Media’s success in the past 15 years (11:16)
How to shift from the agency being about me and all growth to how do I systematize and take myself out of that position (15:18)
Where Shama sees Zen Media going next (16:14)
Why marketing and sales should always align perfectly and how can agency owners begin to figure out where to spend their marketing budget (22:04)
Hiring a business coach and investing in yourself are two of the best decisions you can make as a CEO or founder (26:33)
How Shama thinks about choosing your high-impact activities (30:25)
Why it’s okay to feel great about being a supermom one day and a badass agency owner another day (31:28)
The one thing Shama is working on everyday (36:12)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Shama Hyder’s website
Zen Media
Shama Hyder on Linkedin

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Have you ever had a sales conversation where it feels like your prospect is just not buying what you're selling? If so, then you’re probably not giving them enough chances to say yes to you. In this episode of Sales on the Rocks, we’re gonna help you change that so that you can get your first yes in a sales conversation and keep that momentum flowing throughout so you can finally have them saying yes to your offers as well.

Trust us, you are doing yourself and your agency a huge disservice if you don’t listen to this podcast.

This Cast Covers:

Why we’re not drinking any alcohol for the time being (01:20)
Taking on the 75 Hard Challenge (02:23)
When you hyperfocus on a goal and lose sight of other areas of your life (08:22)
Getting your first yes in a sales conversation and why that's important (15:18)
Some tactics that you can bake into the conversation to aim specifically at getting that yes from a prospect (17:29)
What is a situational appraisal and why do you need to talk about it with your prospect? (18:21)
Why Joey’s still recording his sales calls despite him being a beast at sales (21:18)
The difference between being persuasive and what Joey terms “data-led selling” (22:33)
Four buckets that most agency owners fall into which is why they are failing at agency growth (26:35)
Why we shouldn’t be depending on tactics to grow the agency (30:17)
Examples of these tactics such as Linkedin automation, podcasting, and cold email
Diversify your outreach and prospecting and don’t just stick with one tactic (32:16)
How the Best Damn Agency mastermind is unlike any other agency mastermind you will see anywhere (36:39)
Is empathy the single most important quality for a salesperson to possess?
If Joey had to put together the perfect sales profile, what would be that salesperson’s characteristics (38:19)
A quote from the book 33 Strategies of War that challenged JJ’s perspective on being antagonistic (45:06)
Joey and JJ’s two very different takes on antagonism (50:45)
A challenger sale is someone who is able to challenge someone on the way that they think (50:56)
How the quote has made JJ aware of his blind spot that still needs working (53:02)
Defining who your “enemy” is (57:07)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

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Chris Shreeve is the Co-Founder and VP of Business Development at PrograMetrix, a data-driven programmatic agency that helps brands and agencies improve their programmatic strategy and execution through advanced technology and unrivaled service to increase digital advertising ROI. His expertise spans a diverse range of verticals but he has developed his strongest partnerships over the years in Sports & Entertainment, Higher Education, Travel, Healthcare, and Finance.

He prides his work on building strong, long-term relationships that help brands of all sizes enhance their online presence. Chris accomplishes this by understanding his clients’ key business needs, challenges and goals while applying a comprehensive strategic plan to provide unique solutions to address each business need.

In this episode, Chris shares what he loves about programmatic advertising, which is a very interesting model considering all the regulations and challenges, especially in the cannabis space. We also talk about PrograMetrix, what they do, what challenges and obstacles they see in the near future, and what will happen as more federal regulation and more states wildly accept cannabis, and how that’s going to impact his agency.

This Cast Covers:

The key focus of PrograMetrix and how they’re working towards planting their flag as a leader in paid media in the cannabis world (03:57)
How Chris Shreeve ended up working in this space and what he was doing in the ad tech world before running the agency (05:53)
Did the team ever experience any conflict about controversies surrounding serving an unregulated industry like cannabis? (07:52)
How showing their interest in the cannabis space instead of hiding it led to more mainstream advertisers interested in working with them (08:58)
Creating pods to serve multiple audiences who have different service structures and campaign management and optimization (09:35)
Hiring a marketing manager and creating a 30-32 page whitepaper which served as the entry-level 101 to the cannabis space to generate leads for their marketing agency (12:15)
Why we are at a pivotal turning point in terms of legalization of cannabis and therefore investing heavily in the cannabis industry (14:06)
One of the really unique components is that each state has its own regulations in terms of owning equity, owning a dispensary, or getting licenses (15:44)
Why programmatic advertising is the way to go if you want to market your cannabis or CBD brand (16:54)
Is Chris seeing any success with influencer campaigns in the cannabis space? (18:49)
What is programmatic advertising and when is the right time to bring into an agency serving the cannabis industry? (22:29)
How Programetrix is getting their leads both through inbound and outbound sales efforts thanks to Chris (24:47)
Why Linkedin is the best place to be right now if you’re a business owner or marketing agency working in the cannabis or CBD space (25:58)
Why NFT is also a huge space for the cannabis industry (28:07)
Hurdles and challenges Chris foresees as the leader of his ship and how he plans on overcoming them (30:46)
Specific strategic things that you as an agency owner or founder must invest in to grow in the future (33:16)
How big or small is Chris’s TAM or total addressable market that would work with PrograMetrix in the cannabis space? (34:26)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
PrograMetrix
Chris Shreeve on Linkedin

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Over here at the Sales on the Rocks podcast, we would argue with anyone that sales is the most important part of your business and it should be treated as such. We know that you can’t afford to spend hours and hours every day trying to figure out what content to post on social media or how many emails to send out each week. In this podcast, we discuss the importance of setting goals, how we should be shooting for the moon, and why we need to focus on building relationships with our clients through sales instead of wasting time creating marketing content for them.

What’s in Joey’s Glass: Peerless® Single Barrel Bourbon

What’s in JJ’s glass: Rabbit Hole Cavehill 4 Grain Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

Joey and JJ talk about taxes or more specifically, how to get away with taxes (01:12)
Taking on a more assertive, leadership role works really well with someone who takes on a really strong supporter role (05:31)
Goal setting - should it be done annually or monthly? (08:52)
Joey’s advice for agency owners and founders who want to try launching a podcast (19:21)
Why a podcast is a great content marketing flywheel (22:44)
The times when Joey ever left someone pissed during a sales call (24:12)
A time when JJ was shat on by a prospect during a sales call (27:05)
What to do when someone is trying to take control of the sales conversation (27:52)
Why it is so important to have regular touchpoints with your sales reps (30:22)
How often do prospects cancel on Joey? (31:20)
How to mitigate no-shows or cancellations (31:00)
Keeping your sales reps from falling into a slump and why having a shutdown scorecard can really help determine where the slump is coming from (36:30)
Why people in ministry can make the best type of employees (43:30)
More industries that translate pretty well into marketplace employees (44:54)
What are some things that most agencies need to stop doing? (47:33)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Cameron Gawley is the Co-Founder and CEO of BuzzShift, a digital growth agency for early-stage startups and industry-leading brands such as USAA, Verizon, Neighborhood Goods, Four Corners Brewing Co., Mooala, Everlane, Jack Black Skincare, and Twilio. BuzzShift works with both high-growth startups and mature industry leaders to deliver the strategic planning resources and digital marketing services essential to growth.

In addition to leading BuzzShift, Cameron is the founder of a Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Luxury CBD Wellness brand, LevelOrganics, and investor in a stealth Men’s Skincare brand. He also serves as an investor and advisor to a number of tech startups, teaches Digital Marketing Analytics at Southern Methodist University, and mentors a number of passionate entrepreneurs on their own journey to Brand Success.

In this episode, we talk about why most agency owners struggle to create profitability for their companies, and it’s mostly because they do not know how to create a holistic, long-term strategy for their agency and their clients. Cameron also gives advice for those agency owners thinking of being acquired someday or in the near future.

This Cast Covers:

Why Cameron and Buzzshift decided to hyperfocus on serving direct to consumer brands space (02:04)
One of the biggest contributors to a high win rate when it comes to getting in front of clients - building a proforma (06:00)
Making strategic decisions by following a decision tree starting from looking at the outcomes then looking at quantitative data (09:53)
Strategy oftentimes creates profitability for your company (13:10)
Why most agencies should focus on creating a holistic strategy and having a “measure twice, cut once mentality” (15:41)
Having both builders and drivers to establish trust and a really good benchmark with your clients (20:01)
The journey Buzzshift went on to be acquired twice (24:52)
How to get more specialized and more focused if you want to be acquired as an agency (31:31)
Cameron’s advice for agency owners who want to exit someday (32:27)
Why you need an exit planning strategy as early as now (32:52)
Design your life first, and then design your business around that life (37:15)
Why agency owners need to spend time just sitting back and reflecting about their lives now more than ever (40:24)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Buzzshift
Cameron Gawley
Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork

Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork

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If you’ve been following the Sales on the Rocks episodes for quite a while, you know we always preach about the main things – building out a sales operation for your agency that functions like a well-oiled machine, and how to sell shit like a pro to anyone (while pouring ourselves a glass of brown liquid).

This week, we’re taking everything we talked about so far and piecing them all together as JJ challenges Joey to a sales call roleplay on the spot.

What’s in Joey’s Glass: Jefferson's Grand Selection 'Chateau Pichon Baron French Oak Cask Finish' Straight Bourbon Whiskey

What’s in JJ’s glass: Blade and Bow Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Does the “wine and dine” approach work in closing deals with clients? (08:06)
The most expensive or nicest gift Joey’s prospects have ever gotten for him (13:08)
What we can learn from ugly websites and how well they convert (15:52)
Why Joey is a big fan of simple and streamlined web design (18:05)
How to handle the common objection “I wanna take a look at your case studies or references first” (20:01)
Done will always be better than perfect (23:08)
When to integrate automation into the sales process and use it to optimize your prospecting for efficiency and effectiveness (25:37)
Joey gives us a rundown of what campaign scaling is like (27:44)
Prospecting or sales automation should be a blend of high tech and high touch when using the campaign scaling approach (29:40)
Use this very practical tactic to reach multiple decision makers (33:00)
Joey is put on the spot as he roleplays selling Sales Driven Agency to JJ who plays the role of a fictitious SEO agency owner to SaaS companies (39:39)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Marcel Petitpas is the CEO and founder of Parakeeto, a consulting and technology firm dedicated exclusively to helping agencies answer important questions without wasting time on spreadsheets. They specialize in helping digital marketing creative agencies improve their profitability by essentially helping them get the right insight into the key questions that they need to answer every day to be awesome.

He is also a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and host of The Agency Profit Podcast. He helps first-time entrepreneurs prepare for battle and design a lifestyle and a mindset that accelerates their success. Marcel Petitpas helps creative and digital agencies optimize their profitability by helping them measure and master their core operational metrics and processes.

In this episode, learn how to improve your agency’s profitability through managing things like your time, hiring the right people (and getting rid of those who aren't), using systems to make work easier and less stressful, setting up proper accounting practices for your business including profit & loss statements and balance sheets, tracking KPIs for each department within your agency so you know where improvements can be made.

This Cast Covers:

Reducing your taxes is one of the best investing strategies (03:29)
What they do at Parakeeto, who they help, and how they came about helping agencies with profitability (05:31)
What's a typical agency operating from a profitability perspective? And then what should they or could they operate at? (06:04)
Why most agency owners settle for 10-15% profit when getting up to 35-40% net margins at the end of the year is completely achievable (06:47)
You should pay attention to profit especially if you’re looking to sell your agency and have that exit one day (08:47)
What most agency founders forget when they say their profit is 10% which only makes them half as profitable as they say they are (10:33)
The #1 & 2 culprits that will kill profitability in agencies (11:25)
How to compute for agency gross income and average billable rate (12:34)
Joey gives an example of utilization (15:05)
Do agency owners and founders know that they're struggling with utilization, or is it typically like the silent killer? (16:43)
Marcel talks about the pros and cons of value-based pricing (17:39)
Why you should still be tracking time even if you do value-based pricing no matter how profitable you are (19:20)
Scoping and pricing are two separate things and are independent of each other (21:09)
Where to start if you want to improve the profitability of your agency (28:37)
Questions to ask yourself to move your agency into the right direction with more profit
Is utilizing partners or freelancers to deliver work a good thing? (32:52)
The big profit driver Joey uses that allows him to have 70% profit margins in the agency - having strategic partners (34:19)
A way to ensure that your scoping gets done well and could be a much easier offer for your salesperson to sell (39:32)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Marcel Petitpas
Parakeeto
The Agency Profit Podcast

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In this episode, we answer questions such as what’s the best thought leadership B2B platform to be in right now, how can content marketing drive organic leads, how to 10x your revenue in addition to your inbound efforts, what to do if you’re just really bad at sales, and when to bring up pricing in a sales conversation.

Also, get a chance to win cool shit like exclusive Best Damn Agency t-shirts. Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast and YouTube channel and call or text JJ about it here: 770-855-77247

What’s in Joey’s Glass: Redbreast 12-Year-Old Single Pot Still

What’s in JJ’s glass: Michter’s Kentucky Straight Rye

This Cast Covers:

The thought leadership B2B brand platform that’s gonna blow up in the next few years (chances are you’re probably already using it) (07:51)
Why JJ booked a call with a crypto guru (11:56)
How to dial in on team culture for your sales team in this digital space (13:30)
Is throwing rocks at your enemy a.k.a. tearing down your competitors a good strategy? (17:59)
The right time to bring up other competitors during a sales conversation with your prospect (20:57)
What content marketing strategies work really well in driving organic leads for digital marketing agencies? (23:54)
Joey’s opinion on having a book to drive content strategy or build authority (25:47)
The gentle push that’s gonna shoot your revenue through the roof if you’re already doing inbound very well (28:31)
Why you probably don’t have your shit together even if most content marketing is working really well (34:26)
What to do if you think you’re really bad at sales as the agency founder (37:03)
Doing this one hour a day is gonna make you change your mind about sales and perhaps even increase your revenue (38:13)
Commit to only 10 touchpoints per day (39:59)
How to prep for a sales call (42:30)
Doing ample research on who you’re talking to before a sales call goes a long way (46:30)
How to stop yourself from becoming an inflating balloon (48:39)
When and how is the best way to introduce price into the conversation? (51:01)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Jeff Knauss is the Co-Founder of Digital Hyve, a full-service digital marketing agency that connects brands and their message to targeted audiences online to produce meaningful results for our clients. He is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, and a member of the Current Board of Directors, such as United Way of Central New York, Byrne Dairy, Loretto Foundation, SUNY Oswego Foundation, and many more. Digital Hyve, which ranked among Adweek's 100 Fastest-Growing Agencies and one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, was acquired by Butler/Till in 2021.

In this episode, Jeff Knauss shares the biggest lessons he’s learned from bootstrapping, scaling, and selling an 8-Figure Annual Revenue Digital Marketing Agency. Also, why he decided to create an employee stock ownership plan for Digital Hyve, the true meaning of freedom, niching down per region, and what it takes to become one of the world’s fastest-growing agencies.

This Cast Covers:

Jeff’s journey from getting a job in broadcast television to selling their wildly successful agency Digital Hyve to a 200-person ad agency Butler/Till based in Rochester, New York (02:05)
What was the catalyst responsible for Digital Hyve’s massive growth and landing on the Inc. 500 four years in a row? (05:44)
Building an ownership culture which led to creating an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) (07:51)
Jeff’s role as the founder-based seller and how he transitioned out of that by building a sales team and investing in serious business development (09:54)
The mistakes Jeff made in hiring sales or biz dev leaders that come with a fast-growing agency or company (14:12)
A massive opportunity that most agency owners and founders are missing out on (19:34)
Why the name of the game is to have a niche (22:00)
How regionality has allowed Digital Hyve to give a depth of experience to their clients (23:34)
Jeff’s thought process behind exiting an 8-figure annual revenue digital marketing agency (28:04)
Why you can easily be let down if you keep chasing one goal after the other without really thinking about your North star (34:50)
Ultimate freedom comes from optionality (35:34)
Why Jeff and Joey’s idea of money is freedom (37:33)
Creating a value rubric for yourself and understanding what's really important to you (38:56)
What’s next for Jeff and how he made the decision to exit (40:23)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Digital Hyve

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Think you’re ready to blow up your revenue and scale your sales team but can’t figure out what’s standing in the way? This Sales on the Rocks episode might help you as we break down the process of setting high-level revenue targets so you know exactly what that looks like. We also cover how to ensure you’re targeting the right goals for your sales reps that aren’t too lofty nor too low, how to instill healthy competition among your sales teams, what to do when you’ve got a sales rep that isn’t performing well and needs to be fired, and how to go about hiring a recruiter to look for your next sales hire. Plus, Joey answers questions related to sales rapid-fire style.

What’s in Joey’s Glass: The Glenlivet 18 Year Old

What’s in JJ’s glass: 9-Year-Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Joey’s organization system for collecting articles and newsletters and why he stopped reading articles about sales (04:29)
The healthy ratio of things learned to action items taken according to JJ (08:17)
Joey answers some rapid-fire questions related to sales (12:47)
Joey’s best tech tool for outbound sales and favorite agency podcast other than Best Damn Agency Podcast (12:53)
The best sales advice Joey ever received and the biggest single deal he’s ever won (13:00)
Why Joey learns more about sales from non-sales specific fields such as psychology (15:14)
What does an achievable result for an agency that wants to scale its sales operation look like? (15:49)
Is your total addressable market (TAM) keeping you from scaling higher or faster? (17:39)
Core pillars of a great sales culture (22:23)
How to identify benchmarks or set goals if you want to scale your sales team (27:36)
Closing the gap between identifying your specific sales targets and engineering the benchmarks for your individual sales reps, right? (29:54)
Conversion metrics you should be looking for to ensure your new sales team or sales hire is performing well both quantitatively and qualitatively (33:04)
If Joey had to give up meat or alcohol for the rest of his life, which would he choose? (43:20)
How to remove your emotion of the equation to not let a failing sales rep tank your business (46:12)
Should you look for a recruiter to find you sales talent? If so, how should you go about compensating your recruiter? (49:12)
What to do when you cannot afford to hire a recruiter and can only lean into your personal network (57:05)
JJ asks a personal question on how much longer Joey sees himself as the CEO and owner of an agency and what Joey plans to keep doing in the future specific to the Best Damn Agency Mastermind

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Tim Warren is the CEO of Helium SEO, a Cincinnati-based SEO & marketing agency that helps brands thrive in the digital age. In 2016 he sold his first company SEO exposed and has 8 years of experience in SEO and has worked to improve the online marketing strategies of billion-dollar firms. He was also recently named a “Forty Under 40” award winner by the Cincinnati Business Courier in 2019.

Find out how you can transition from being a founder-based seller of a startup to growing and scaling your company fast and predictably even without funding.

This Cast Covers:

Why Tim quit his medical school to become a serial entrepreneur (02:05)
How Helium started in 2017 and scaled quickly up to 60 employees (08:44)
Two things most founders forget that keep their agencies stuck and unable to scale (11:41)
The cost of deciding to hire a salesperson or sales director too early in the business (14:26)
Tim’s views on choosing to focus on sales to scale Helium (16:18)
Why you should never bring on a director of business as your first sales hire ever (19:51)
What you should look for in a sales hire and when to bring in salespeople to your organization (24:19)
Why you want salespeople with 2 to 5 years sales experience (27:00)
Building a team and cultivating healthy competition between your salespeople (28:00)
What’s more important to salespeople than a huge commission or bonus check? (32:37)
Tim’s advice to the agency owner struggling to build a sales team (34:13)
Why it makes sense to find a sales team who can sell your product at least 50% as good as you (35:03)
Repetitions increases productivity (37:15)
Why having a rockstar sales process over rockstar salespeople (39:45)
Specific ways to document sales processes (45:51)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Helium SEO
Tim Warren on Linkedin

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In this episode, we talk about what it’s like checking things off from your goals, transitioning from being employed to being a CEO, and good ol’ sales. Sales topics consist of selling multiple services, doing demos, serving a particular niche, and most importantly, how to do sales calls effectively and efficiently.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Energy Drink

What’s in JJ’s glass: Good ol’ coffee

This Cast Covers:

Why setting big goals and creating a vision board is so important (07:26)
Joey’s journey transitioning from being a handsomely paid VP of sales to starting his own business and the events that led up to that (09:09)
How to prioritize and create more margin in your life as a CEO and other areas in life (13:42)
Determining which things to get off your plate and how to delegate it to someone else (15:48)
If Joey were going to jump on to a pre-existing company sales team, what would he prefer to sell? (19:46)
Taking a focused, proven offer and creating a process to get it in front of the right people to develop a relationship and trust (21:43)
Why Joey prefers to sell multiple services rather than just selling one solution as long as it’s in a vertical niche (23:55)
The only mindset you should maintain in every sales call with a client or prospect (24:17)
Why you should only really talk about the past, present, and future in every sales call (28:23)
Is doing demos a yay or nay for Joey? (32:01)
Why you should never do work for free (33:41)
Differences between the SaaS world and the service world and why one requires demos more than the other (36:10)
Mirroring as a useful tool in day-to-day sales context (38:50)
The only two people who are not successful working with Sales Driven Agency (44:01)
One of Joey’s mistakes on a sales call with a client he didn’t like to work with which backfired on him (49:30)
Joey predicts the rise of local and regional agencies in the next coming months or years (52:02)
If you hire and train the right SDR, your results will go off the roof (54:41)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Mark DeVito is the President and Partner at Beyond Definition, formerly Bates Creative, a boutique brand experience agency on a mission to positively impact the world. Having led brand-centric campaigns and developed creative content strategies for over 20 years, he is known as a sharp-meets-savvy strategist.

Mark guides teams to translate relevant data into memorable experiences by applying his comprehensive expertise, strategic thinking, and creative cohesion.

In this podcast, Mark Devito talks about how he pivoted Beyond Definition from a boutique creative firm focused merely on creative output to becoming a strategic partner of their clients, increasing not only their client value but their revenue as well. He also discusses why he chose hourly pricing over value-based pricing, and why most agency owners get this type of pricing wrong. Lastly, Joey and Mark talk about challenges in outsourcing and sales and how to resolve these issues in your digital agency.

This Cast Covers:

The massive cultural shift Mark went through from working at a larger agency to leading a boutique marketing firm (02:52)
Mark’s strategic reasoning for choosing to price on an hourly basis rather than based on value (04:47)
How Beyond Definition made their move from being a creative digital agency focused on delivery to focusing more on strategic work (09:18)
The big difference between being the driver or the captain in a partner-client relationship and simply being an order taker (12:05)
How does Beyond Definition think about growth? 17:54)
Why Joey advises against requests for proposal or RFPs (20:16)
The vertical and horizontal niche Beyond Definition chooses to operate in (21:12)
Current areas Mark and Beyond Definition would like to improve on and how are they addressing them (23:54)
Why strategic partnerships are the best to have if you want to scale, lower costs, and increase profit margins (27:07)
The perks of outsourcing and how that looks like at Beyond Definition (30:23)
Beyond Definition’s focus in the next 12 months for the agency (31:24)
Why most agencies should stop thinking on a binary scale and understand that they can get incrementally better at sales (35:00)
How you can leverage so much more from outbound sales rather than rely on marketing to increase your margins (36:59)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Beyond Definition
Mark DeVito on LinkedIn

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If you’re selling a high-ticket service facing a lot of objections in every sales conversation, then you’re in the right place. Most founder-based sellers and salespeople admit they charge too little or struggle with justifying their prices. We get it. It's hard to get people to pay you what you're worth, which is why you need to become a boss in the art of handling objections and communicating your value. After this episode, you’ll learn how to overcome common objections such as “I can’t afford it” and “Is this really necessary?” so that clients start paying you the right amount.

We only have one request after learning Joey’s HECCC framework for handling sales objections: Don’t be an idiot, go ahead and do this in your sales conversations.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Avion Reserva 44

What’s in JJ’s glass: Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

How do you effectively raise prices and not burn through your entire list of current clients? (10:18)
Why you want to double, triple, or 4x your prices in the first place (11:11)
What we can learn from Jimmy the barber about raising prices (14:53)
How to have that price conversation with existing clients without having to add additional value to your current partnership (17:21)
How to justify pricing high even if you’re a relatively new agency (20:12)
Should you consider giving money-back guarantees? (24:04)
How to leverage having this guarantee in the sales process and when to bring it up (29:50)
Messaging is everything (31:44)
A hundred different ways to get creative with a guarantee (33:47)
How to handle sales objections and the most common mistakes salespeople or founder-based sellers make when faced with objections about pricing (38:37)
Leverage your impact pro forma when an objection about price is the real issue (39:19)
Siloing the problem or creating a hypothetical solution to address the client’s true problem (40:21)
Joey’s framework for objection handling - the HECCC framework (47:46)
Fascinating takeaways from the book The Road Less Stupid (49:20)
The biggest dumb taxes Joey and JJ had to pay because they weren’t thinking enough (50:21)
Should you set aside some time just to think strategically? (53:58)
How to be intentional in your everyday life (57:28)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
The Road Less Stupid

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Re Perez is a seasoned Brand Consultant, with a Fortune 500 background at top global brand consultancies including Interbrand and Siegel+Gale. He is also the founder of BRANDING FOR THE PEOPLE, and since 2011, his agency has delivered Fortune 500-level branding to thousands of entrepreneurs across 45+ different industries around the world—from start-ups, Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies, and established multi-million-dollar businesses. He has a proven track record for helping his clients double, triple, and quadruple their business.

In this episode, he shares what makes branding one of the most powerful tools agency founders and owners can use to tap into their clients’ subconscious. We'll show you how to set yourself apart from the saturated competition and create an attractive, authentic brand that will make your ideal clients clamor to work with you.

This Cast Covers:

Re’s background as a former Fortune 500 brand consultant for one of the top global branding firms in New York and why he wanted out after a series of personal life-changing events (01:57)
What motivates him to speak up about his experiences and share his knowledge on branding for the people (03:11)
Why should your brand be gay and what does that exactly mean? (05:27)
The tipping point for Re that made him leave the Fortune 500 brand consulting career and work with small to midsized businesses instead (08:35)
Where the real magic lies in creating a high-level brand (09:58)
Re’s advice for agency owners who are afraid to try something different and go more authentic because they fear they’ll be canceled or disliked by many (11:24)
Why everything becomes easier when you know who you serve (14:55)
The mistakes Re did in his own business and agency that he wishes no one ever goes through (16:31)
A brilliant formula all agencies could use to create a hundred million dollar offer (19:27)
Re clears up misconceptions of what most people think a brand is and perfectly describes what a brand should be (23:58)
How can agencies pull off or achieve their desired perception (26:39)
Exercises you could try with your team and clients to come up with an authentic, powerful, and relevant brand (30:12)
How fear-setting has helped Joey become more of a risk-taker (42:44)
Why according to Re, the objective is to have so much freaking fun (48:51)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Branding For The People
Your Brand Should Be Gay (Even If You’re Not)
Connect with Re on Linkedin

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Ryan Redding is the Owner of DP Marketing Services, a digital marketing firm for HVAC, plumbers, and other home service industries. Ryan is also the Owner of Hippie Cow, LLC, a web design and SEO agency for small businesses. Ryan has an MBA from Northeastern State University and a background in business development. He was previously the Acting Director of the Center for Technology Commercialization at Oklahoma State University.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast long enough, you probably heard this advice once or twice from us before: If you’re a CEO leading a 7 to 8 figure agency, you need to fire yourself from either the sales, marketing, or fulfillment seat and let your good team of people do their job. Ryan Redding shares how he went from working 80-90 hours a week to now averaging 8 hours a week and how his agency gets tons of inbound leads. Plus, get to know how to write emails that cut through the noise and learn how to leverage them for outbound sales even if you’re just starting out.

What’s in Ryan’s glass: The Macallan 12-Year-Old - Double Cask Single Malt Scotch Whisky

What’s in Joey’s glass: Glenlivet 18

What’s in JJ’s glass: Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Why Ryan chose to offer marketing to the trucking and plumbing services industry and describes their ideal customers (05:02)
How Ryan got his life back by making some pretty drastic changes in his business (07:26)
The taste of freedom working only 8 hours a week compared to 80-90 hours a week back in July of 2021 (10:24)
How he was able to take a huge chunk of time off by equipping his team and setting up the right systems (10:24)
The mistakes he used to make that kept him glued to the CEO seat (11:55)
The one tactic they use to get a ton of inbound leads (18:07)
How this tactic allows them to be really aggressive in increasing their prices (21:22)
Is it safe to invest in cryptocurrency? Joey shares his thoughts (23:09)
Challenges that Ryan and his team had to face during the pandemic in terms of client retention and keeping their business afloat (28:53)
Why COVID-19 turned out to be a great time for plumbing, HVAC, and home services (30:00)
How they dealt with undergoing two years worth of churn in 2 months due to the political landscape changing (31:51)
Ryan’s plans for DP Marketing Services in the future (33:36)
How to craft a kickass email copy for outbound prospecting (39:11)
What kind of levers should you pull to get the attention of your readers or prospects?‘ (39:55)
A short but sweet simple first email in less than 20 words that Joey sends with an open rate north of 40%, reply rate of above 30%, and positive response rate of 50% of those who replied to the email (55:56)
When and how to use the campaign scaling method (1:00:05)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with Ryan Redding on Linkedin
DP Marketing Services

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Scott Harkey is President and Chief Revenue Officer of OH Partners, one of the nation’s fastest-growing independent advertising agencies. OH Partners has experienced tremendous growth over the past three years adding clients including Armor All Brands, Wynn Resorts, Virgin Hotels, and more.

Harkey leads marketing and strategy efforts for the agency’s robust account roster. His extensive experience in media, as well as traditional and digital marketing, uniquely qualify him to spearhead integration initiatives for brands on a local and national level. The agency has landed on Inc. Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies for the past six years.

This Cast Covers:

Scott’s stable of agencies and how OH Partners was built (02:02)
Several factors that lead to an 80% dissatisfaction rate for the people working in the agency space (03:34)
Why Joey advises against being an incredibly wide generalist if you’re just starting out as an agency owner (06:19)
Scott’s beliefs on specializing more in an industry or horizontal niche rather than in a specific offer or service for different markets (07:08)
How Scott realized he wanted to become an agency owner while working in radio (10:05)
Scott recalls how he started OH Partners 13 years ago (14:24)
How Scott discovered acquisitions which led to OH Partners being known as one of the Fastest Growing Companies (16:14)
What it was like taking on Nomadic Agency and having to experience working with Tim Washburn (22:23)
What does Scott Harley’s chaotic day-to-day look like? (28:02)
How to bring two or multiple companies together who have completely different cultures and systems (32:02)
Scott shares his insights on why there is a 40% churn of employees and agencies post-COVID and why ad agencies struggle with more turnover than other business segments (37:02)
How OH Partners bounced back from these challenges in culture, employee satisfaction and how to solve that lost social cache (40:46)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Scott Harkey on Linkedin
OH Partners

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We don’t wanna give anything away too early, but this might have been one of our best SOTR episodes to date. Why? We give you the lowdown on how to finally be free of lead disease, take advantage of your lowest hanging fruits so you can start making more money, and what to do to get your prospects nodding their head and saying yes to you from the moment they book a call all the way to the close.

It’s 7:30 in the morning, and we just got back from the Best Damn Agency Mastermind retreat. So no one is grabbing a drink. Today, we’re sipping coffee only.

This Cast Covers:

How JJ crushed it in the Best Damn Mastermind retreat in Scottsdale (02:03)
Joey’s biggest takeaway after captaining the ship and hanging out with these rockstar CEOs and agency founders (03:26)
Why the BDA Mastermind’s goal is more about helping CEOs build wealth beyond sales, business, and growing an agency (05:59)
Investing in making our agency as profitable as possible so that it can spin off cast flow to build more wealth (07:16)
The two lowest hanging fruits most agency owners leave out that could have easily given them the highest return on investment (09:50)
This campaign works almost like clockwork and can literally get you 300 grand (or even more) out of thin air or (13:22)
Why a lot of agencies suffer from problem-solver ADD and how to actually cure this disease (15:16)
Being proactive rather than reactive in life and business can really make a huge difference (15:59)
Why it’s important to have a healthy balance of viewing life on the dance floor and viewing it from the balcony (16:55)
How often should you tweak what’s already working right? (20:13)
The importance of quarterly reviews by yourself especially if you’re a CEO or founder (22:29)
Having trusted advisors to vet the new idea you’re planning to implement (23:59)
The funny thing about pricing is it’s actually mostly guesswork (27:16)
Creating an ideal decision-maker profile and how it’s different from an ICP (32:15)
The most common mistakes most business owners do when creating their IDMP (36:48)
How do you start doing effective helpful research on your ideal client profile if you're just getting into a new niche? (38:08)
Why we push getting into conversations with your prospects instead of just assuming how they are like (39:49)
Getting to know the personalities of your prospects and mirroring (44:40)
The more important thing than closing clients (47:44)
Questions you should be asking when you make conceptual agreements with your clients (51:01)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin
Email JJ to learn more about the Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Andrew Clark is a founder and Chief Strategist of Humanaut, a brand production studio based out of Chattanooga, Tennessee that works with both startups and established brands to get good things inside people's brains. They help innovative brands who make things that are good for people and the planet.

In his early years, Andrew studied literature and the history of ideas in pursuit of a PhD but left the program to become an entrepreneur. His first start-up venture used new technology to revive the written word in a rare-book business. In 2011, Andrew and David started working together and launched several apps and new startups. They founded Humanaut in 2013.

This Cast Covers:

How Chattanooga, Tennessee sparked the startup community and became pioneers of the gig internet in a small town (01:08)
What they do inside Humanaut and how they get good things inside people’s brains (06:55)
Why Andrew and David are picky with clients and now only work with established brands that are mission-driven and values-based (07:57)
Helping emerging brands not just market to a niche but figure out how to take their message mainstream (11:49)
What the hell is Mother Brain??? (13:04)
An innovative way of how Humanaut sources and recruits talent and why they went that route (16:19)
Andrew shares some work they’ve done for Dickel Tennessee Whisky and what he loves about working with spirits brands (20:11)
How do you scale brand strategy or creative work? (26:32)
Why most advertisers and marketers pay attention to the wrong things and what they should focus on instead (31:31)
Brands have to be built for change (30:19)
What’s next for Humanaut in terms of innovating, the obstacles they’re currently facing, and how they plan to solve them in the future (35:10)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Humanaut
Andrew Clark on Linkedin

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In this episode, we talk about the more creative, out-of-the-box ways of getting our prospects’ attention, optimizing the inbound sales process, how to practice future pacing with your prospects, and how to leverage LinkedIn to drive actual leads and start actual conversations.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Jesse James America's Outlaw Barrel Strength Tennessee Whisky

What’s in JJ’s glass: MMaker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky

This Cast Covers:

The most unique thing Joey’s ever done to get the attention of a prospect and get them to a closed deal (09:13)
Where does inbound fit into the entire sales hierarchy and how important is it to start building a process for it? (15:51)
An effective way to optimize inbound by qualifying the people you want to work with through an application form on your website (16:22)
Why Joey would rather prioritize building an outbound sales strategy first (18:15)
Three crucial things founder-based sellers can do if they can’t afford to hire a salesperson just yet, (18:52)
The roadmap to start building out your very own sales operation (23:50)
How to leverage LinkedIn to drive actual leads and start actual conversations all the way from building a profile to outreach (24:47)
Getting the fundamentals right on your Linkedin profile so it becomes an optimized landing page for anyone interested in working with you (26:18)
What is future pacing, what does that look like for the prospect and why is it so important? (36:52)
Joey makes a note about future pacing that some salespeople or founder-based sellers often get wrong (38:20)
Super detailed methodology for nurturing warm leads (42:33)
Creating a playbook that’s repeatable once you figure out what works the best for you in terms of inbound sales (47:50)
What does the role of an email list play in nurturing warm leads and does it convert to a meeting (49:23)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Alex Sheridan is the founder of Impaxs, who helps companies, entrepreneurs, business owners capitalize opportunities on Linkedin, help generate real revenue business through Linkedin content, utilizing social selling, Sales Navigator, and creative video editing service to build, solidify and enhance their brand at the same time.

Tune in to our conversation and learn why now is the best to utilize Linkedin especially if you’re an agency owner, how he stumbled onto unleashing his creative and how he helps transform business owners into revenue-generating content creators on Linkedin, and how you can turn your Linkedin into a lead machine.

This Cast Covers:

How Alex considered himself a weird kid when he was younger who wrote music and rapped and acted in class (03:39)
Having this itch to go and build a business from scratch but also feeling pressured to enter the corporate scene (04:48)
How he stumbled upon creating Linkedin video content by coming up with good business quality material wrapped up in entertainment, a.k.a. edutainment (05:46)
Why being a single dad pushed him to start his own social selling company (07:37)
What Joey realized from one of the most life-threatening wrecks that happened to him recently (09:31)
How do you convince an agency owner that it’s worth building their brand, credibility, and authority on Linkedin (12:56)
Lead gen strategies and call to action frameworks you can use on Linkedin (17:45)
Why you should look at your Linkedin profile as a landing page and what elements to put in each section (23:24)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Impaxs
Alex Sheridan on Linkedin

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In this episode, we talk about the duration of sales cycles, how to scale your sales team, where to invest your money when you’re scaling whether on inbound or outbound, and how to handle difficult and oftentimes frustrating conversations with customer service people.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Strawberry soda, sweetened with Stevia, with no calories

What’s in JJ’s glass: Michter’s Kentucky Straight Rye

This Cast Covers:

Why JJ is pissed due to poor customer service (02:26)
How to talk to customer service reps without losing your shit and get them to work with you to find a solution (07:11)
A neurolinguistic programming technique you could use to get into a win-win situation for you and the other party (10:46)
What does a sales cycle look like and how long does it typically take? (17:29)
How to shorten your sales cycle down to a two to three meeting, three-week process (20:13)
Why the foot in the door offer accomplishes so many things in the sales cycle (24:49)
Joey explains what a commitment call is (26:34)
Scaling the process of hiring sales reps or your sales team (29:15)
Is it better to bring in only outbound sales reps or should you beef up your marketing efforts to increase your inbound leads? (35:51)
Focusing on fulfillment vs focusing on sales (36:30)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Adam Weiler is the CEO and founder of Sunken Stone, a performance-based Amazon marketing agency in San Diego, California. Since opening their doors in 2017, Sunken Stone has helped more than 100 7-8 figure brands generate over $100M in sales. Sunken Stone, is a Top-500 Amazon seller, has shipped over 2 million orders on the platform, and now helps over 80 brands successfully grow and scale their business by using the Amazon sales channel.

Adam is an experienced entrepreneur, visionary, and mentor. In addition to Sunken Stone, he's founded other companies including a non-profit called CablesForCauses and a mobile solar panel company called StrongVolt. Adam received both his Bachelor’s in Political Science and MBA from San Diego State University and still volunteers at the University’s Lavin Entrepreneurship Center to help young entrepreneurs launch their ideas and businesses.

In this episode, Adam shares his entrepreneurial tendencies in his childhood, how he essentially built his own store and put it up on Amazon, his agency beginnings, Sunken Stone’s version of a foot in the door offer, and why he doesn’t take on Amazon-only brands anymore.

This Cast Covers:

How Adam and Sunken Stone helps more established e-commerce brands build a presence or scale on Amazon (02:15)
Why it’s so difficult to manage an Amazon store as compared to other platforms (03:06)
What young hustler Adam was into at 12 years old (03:48)
His journey from a bunch of sales jobs to agency life (05:55)
A marketing hack he used to do back when he sold drugs in his teens (07:14)
Building his own online store before Amazon even existed (10:17)
How he took one Amazon brand from a six-figure run rate to an eight-figure run rate in six months (11:01)
A lead-in offer he learned from Will Ford which was instrumental in creating Sunken Stone (11:58)
How they came about the feather test (12:35)
How Sunken Stone has evolved marketing and process-wise (15:11)
A drastic difference before and after adopting and modifying the feather test (15:25)
Why the customer isn’t always right and why sometimes choosing your team over a client is the right thing (19:59)
Why Joey hates the phrase “the customer is always right” especially for agencies (20:30)
Why most agencies struggle to hire and train salespeople which ends up in underpricing and losing your profit margins (22:53)
Adam talks about their merger with another agency to become a bigger player in the space (28:50)
Having internal resources that could be acquired as separate entities and businesses that could close more deals (32:22)
Why it’s always good to create marketing wind off Amazon and optimize your Amazon store (33:15)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Sunken Stone

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Corey Morris is the Chief Strategy Officer of Voltage, a digital marketing agency based in Kansas City. Voltage partners with clients to create award-winning strategies focused on design, development, search engine optimization, paid search, and marketing campaigns. For the past 15 years, Corey Morris has worked in strategic and leadership roles in the digital marketing industry. In 2015, he led the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) Cities initiative in Kansas City upon founding the KC Search Marketing Conference and currently serves as VP for the worldwide SEMPO Cities Program.

Corey also shares his knowledge about the search industry as a VIP contributor to Search Engine Journal and speaker at local and national events on SEO and digital marketing topics. He also formerly served as co-host of a monthly tech radio show called Tech Circuit.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Chattanooga Whiskey Experimental Batch #76 Limited Edition Single Barrel

What’s in JJ’s glass: Bulleit Rye - Small Batch | Straight Rye Mash Whiskey

What’s in Corey’s glass: Woodford Reserve - Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

If Corey could add any past or present chiefs player to his current sales team, who would he pick in each role and why? (05:41)
The last time Joey and Corey were totally off the grid (09:17)
Learning to delegate necessary leadership roles to test the efficiency of your agency even without you leading real-time (13:08)
What Corey’s work history was and what he has exactly done for the company (14:13)
The pros and cons of Corey stepping into a sales seat for a digital agency despite having a single sales-specific background (14:29)
How Corey’s experience on talking with people about deep and genuine topics about their lives has played a role in selling his business (19:52)
How Corey has learned to value conversations and relationships despite being an introverted extrovert (21:37)
Genuinely caring a lot about people and the outcomes and dreams that they have (23:53)
Why Corey thinks having all the money does not solve all of a person’s problems (25:00)
The one change that Corey made in the past 12 months to Voltage and sales operation that's made the biggest impact (31:12)
What Corey is most excited about for the Scottsdale trip (34:10)
Joey’s recent awesome conversation with his business man crush: Alex Hormozi (38:27)
The one thing that Joey really ‘took and run with’ from his conversation with Alex Hormozi (40:11)
How to spot good sales consultants from bad ones in the sales space for agencies (42:29)
The difference between a Coach/Consultant and someone who actually goes to solve the problem (43:00)
Why you would rather invest top dollar upfront than building a sales operation on your own (50:15)
How Joey knows right away that he’s got a prospect client on the hook (54:11)
How Joey approaches every client: outbound vs. inbound vs. referral (58:13)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin
Voltage
Episode 40 with Alex Hormozi

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Austin Schneider is the Founder & CEO of Brandtegic, a collaborative digital marketing company that helps its clients look as good as they are by carefully designed strategies to elevate their brand. They specialize in brand management, consulting, creative, paid media, and more.

After seeing the challenge of social media and applying his gift in solving business problems in the marketing field, he grew Brandtegic to about 20 full-time employees in a short period of two and a half years. By utilizing the great power of his mind, Austin has assisted his entire agency in its journey to personal development. Today, he continues to work with medium-to-large service-based industries in order to help them thrive, appreciating the grind, serve others, and ultimately serve God.

Learn how training your mind can help your agency organization scale, how Austin assisted his team on their personal development journey and the biggest realization he has about delegation in this episode.

This Cast Covers:

Austin's background, what he does, and how Brandtegic came to fruition (01:41)
His unique story starting from scratch, marketing himself in real estate and eventually grew into an agency with 20 full-time employees (02:05)
The importance of faith and personal development in aligning oneself (03:12)
Being a visionary vs. being an implementer type (03:54)
Why every agency should invest in personal development especially as CEOs (06:06)
Austin's commitment to personal development, and why he considers this his most valuable asset (06:18)
Personal development is being able to grow, leave yourself and become a perpetual learner (06:51)
How to transform and train the mind into a powerful tool for success (07:23)
Growing our identity through the Law of Attraction (09:44)
Your mindset is your greatest asset (10:22)
Growing up without an entrepreneurial family inspired Austin to adopt a growth mindset and stop thinking about scarcity (11:18)
Our brain’s reticular activating system has the greatest influence on our subconscious minds (14:10)
Austin shares practical tips on how to train your mind to think right every day (16:42)
The nature versus nurture aspect of beliefs (18:57)
A journey through Austin's agency life and how personal development has helped his whole organization scale (22:21)
Why personal development should focus on making it about the people rather than scaling up (24:10)
His biggest realization about delegation and why chasing more money will cause you more stress than growth (29:14)
The importance of creating a healthier environment for teaching and becoming people-centric (30:58)
How to sustain continued growth and avoid the noise in the agency space (31:46)
Austin's vision for Brandtegic, and steps to overcome hurdles and address future challenges (37:47)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Austin Schneider on Instagram
Austin Schneider Website
Brandtegic

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Alex is a successful entrepreneur, marketer, and president of We Do Web Content, an Inc. 5000 business. His firm devises content and marketing strategies and produces online content for law firms, medical professionals, and small businesses nationwide.

He counsels hundreds of clients with the broad knowledge gained from his direct experience in digital marketing, SEO, email marketing, marketing automation, content marketing, and social marketing. Alex is also a frequent contributor to the Search Engine Journal and is a Forbes Council Member and contributor.

What’s in Joey’s glass: E.H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel Bourbon

What’s in JJ’s glass: Michter’s Kentucky Straight Rye

This Cast Covers:

What would it take Joey and Alex to up and leave and step away from running their own agencies? (05:03)
How can jiu-jitsu training or any type of sport with lots of physical activity help in becoming a good leader or sell better? (10:44)
Is jujitsu a big part of what makes Alex successful as an agency owner or in sales? (14:39)
What it was like for Alex to change the business model his company has had for 13 years (16:18)
The whole mindset you create when deciding to think positive (17:52)
Joey uses tornadoes as a metaphor to talk about the power of our choices (18:41)
How to leverage speaking in conferences and becoming keynote speakers into lead gen and turn it into actual business opportunities (21:08)
When Alex decided to do something completely different at a conference which made the crowd go fucking nuts (23:38)
One of Alex’s biggest pivots this year (30:58)
Alex’s biggest wins as a founding member of Best Damn Agency Mastermind (36:15)
How to test a new offer against different industries (42:08)
Joey talks about the pay for performance business model or performance-based pricing model (47:36)
Leveraging long-form content as a lead gen tool in the agency space (49:35)
How Joey made his first hire and why that decision was pivotal for him and his business (54:30)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin
The No B.S. Outbound Sales Guide For Marketing Agencies

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Alex Hormozi is an entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. Alex and his wife Leila are exemplars of early success. At the age of 30, their portfolio of companies—which is made up of SAAS, e-commerce, and training as well as traditional brick and mortar businesses—went beyond $100M in total revenue generated over the course of just 3 years (and now does $85 million per year). Alex is passionate about teaching entrepreneurs how to bootstrap and grow their businesses to the point where they could support important social causes that improve the quality of lives of underprivileged communities.

If you’ve already read his book, don’t forget to give an honest review, take a screenshot, and email it to podcast@salesdrivenagency.com. As a thank you for showing Alex some love, I’ll have my team pick out one lucky winner by the end of September and I’ll personally hire your next salesperson for free through my sales recruiting company.

This Cast Covers:

The benefits of niching down and why so many people hate it (06:10)
Why you should aim to build authority fast and how you can do that by committing to a specific niche (13:13)
The three categories of growth-driven agencies (16:05)
When to stop obsessing over lead gen and focus on client value and win rate (17:33)
The power of investing in a business so it becomes an asset that generates passive income rather than staying as a well-paying job (21:55)
The best book on offer creation, offer structuring and picking a target market (23:31)
What the value formula is and how it can help you identify the differentiating factor that makes life easy for you and your business (25:29)
How Alex came up with the idea to create the book because he wanted to put concrete definitions around the term value (26:10)
How and why you should keep your product—especially if it’s a course—shorter, not longer
Alex’s philosophy on life, business, and legacy (42:07)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Alex Hormozi on Youtube
Alex Hormozi’s website
$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

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In today’s episode, we talk about the differences between sales leadership roles, sales managers, and sales coaches, what assets you should be looking at as a sales manager, and what to do when your sales rep or team hits a slump. We also talk about why roleplaying is so important to up your game as a salesperson, things to look for when hiring for a sales leadership role, and a time when Joey’s superhuman ability to not get drunk failed.

What’s in JJ’s glass: Peerless® Single Barrel Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

JJ kicks off the episode by asking Joey to describe the last time he got super drunk (03:27)
What would Joey do differently if he would start Sales Driven Agency all over again? (05:50)
Why most agency founders struggle with shiny object syndrome and one-time hit tactics (08:11)
Which hat should you put on if you were a sales manager, sales leader, or sales coach? (10:00)
How to build out the framework for each sales leadership, coaching, and management process and the important components of each role (10:29)
Why not all good salespeople can be great sales leaders (11:20)
How a sales coach should handle team meetings and one on one meetings on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis (12:06)
The different assets you need to give you insight into what your people are doing from a management perspective (12:14)
How often should sales managers conduct performance reviews and why it’s important to have both quantitative and qualitative reviews for each salesperson (13:46)
Keeping these things in place will make your life as a sales manager so much easier (14:14)
The assets you should care the most about as a manager (14:18)
Joey’s hiring criteria for vetting somebody, bringing someone in, or promoting somebody to fill out those three roles (16:19)
One of the most common mistakes agency owners and founders make when building out their sales operation and hiring people for the sales leadership role (20:31)
Why momentum is an incredibly powerful force in anything we do (21:58)
What to do when your team hits a slump and loses momentum (22:25)
How to not do shitty roleplays (32:50)
Why is sales roleplaying so important and when or how often should sales reps be doing this? (33:47)
The types of personas you need to imagine sitting across the table from you in a sales conversation (35:39)
Is it a worthwhile investment for a founder to roleplay with their sales reps? (38:40)
Should agency owners consider giving incentives to account managers? (40:48)
Create micro foot-in-the-door offers for future services (43:11)
How Joey values generosity in a strategic perspective and the types of things he gets fired up about to give (48:00)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Joe Sullivan is the co-founder of Gorilla 76, an industrial marketing agency based in St. Louis, Missouri that helps mid-sized B2B manufacturers identify, attract, engage and drive sales opportunities with customers. The company uses a combination of positioning, content marketing, search engine optimization, website development, and sales enablement, among others.

He dedicates most of his time crafting thought leadership content in the Industrial Marketing Learning Center, and is also the host of The Manufacturing Executive Podcast, a show focused on conversations with passionate manufacturing leaders who have compelling stories to share about their successes and struggles. Outside of work, Joe likes to cook, watch his Green Bay Packers, and chase his three crazy kids – Grace, Jack, and Charlie – with his wife of 10 years, Julie.

In this episode, Joe talks about how Gorilla 76 found its way into the industrial sector and decided to own that niche, the challenges they’ve had to face working with companies who only viewed marketing and sales as an expense, and how tailoring content geared specifically towards mid-sized manufacturing companies helped them grow and scale their business into the success they are today.

This Cast Covers:

How Joe and the team at Gorilla 76 navigate through the manufacturing space where marketing is seen as an expense or a necessary evil (02:17)
One of the challenges of working with the manufacturing sector as a vertical is the learning curve and education that has to happen (04:22)
How to shift the mindset around marketing from being looked at as an expense to marketing being seen as a revenue-generating function of the business (5:00)
What does educating the buyer (in this case, the manufacturing sector) look like for Gorilla 76? (07:36)
Why Joe decided to create The Manufacturing Executive which is a growth strategy podcast for manufacturing leaders (10:30)
How having a podcast tailored to the manufacturing sector got him in front of the right audience and clients (11:42)
How the podcast serves as the flywheel for most of their content marketing strategy (12:10)
What made Joe and his co-founder Jon decide to niche down and dump all of their time, energy, and resources into knowing and serving the industrial sector? (14:47)
Joey talks about the law of combinatorics as it applies to niching down whether horizontal or vertical (19:32)
Where the future of Gorilla 76 is headed and the hurdles they’re trying to solve now as they grow and scale even bigger (26:05)
Being intentional about the work they do and don’t do, committing to process documentation, and having the methodology taught and replicated very easily as more people come into their firm (29:02)
What does Joe care about as a CEO and co-founder but also outside the agency life? (31:36)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Joe Sullivan on LinkedIn
Gorilla 76

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A lot of what makes up the agency space right now are overly corporate, super buttoned-up, and overly professional because they think that’s how to play the game. Brian Cross took a different approach to build his personal brand and Elasticity’s brand, and we’re gonna find out exactly what he did.

In this episode, you’ll get to know Joey and Brian’s attitude on life that’s brought them more clients, more sales, and more money. Tune in to find out why Joey’s face got all messed up, but stay for the little game we play at the very end. This podcast is gonna keep you entertained all Friday night.

What’s in Brian’s glass: The Yamazaki 12-Year-Old | Single Malt Japanese Whisky

This Cast Covers:

The crazy story of how Joey ended up having stitches on his face from his trip in Northern Tennessee (03:06)
How we met Brian and the cool things they’re doing over at Elasticity (11:17)
What makes Brian and his team stand out despite being a full-service agency (17:15)
Why following the rules is the worst marketing decision you'll ever make (18:23)
The story behind appearing on Zoom with a panda over his head (20:46)
How he’s built his personal brand and the company Elasticity’s brand (23:55)
What Joey preaches to every salesperson before going into a sales call (26:34)
Why most agencies aren’t able to be innovative and authentic in terms of marketing (31:16)
Brian’s outlandish fashion sense and how that ties into his personal brand (33:55)
Why most people can’t pull off wearing Squidward sneaks even if that’s pretty cool and awesome too (36:36)
What's rotten berries got to do with STDs? (39:05)
The happenings inside the Best Damn Agency Mastermind (41:33)
The last time we compromised on our authentic selves and didn’t hold up to our values (44:17)
Which NFL quarterback would you choose to create your sales team of? (53:10)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Elasticity

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Todd Taskey is an M&A Advisor for CEOs and Entrepreneurs at Potomac Business Capital. For over 20 years, he has been an entrepreneur, business owner, investment banker, and business finance advisor. As well as offering M&A advice and investment banking services, Todd has also been a founding investor, member of the Board of Directors, or part of the management team of several businesses. He helps CEOs and entrepreneurs develop a successful exit strategy by understanding the mid-market investment banking process.

Todd sheds some light on what really goes down during an agency acquisition, what you need to prepare and strategize for an acquisition, when is the best time to exit, how to negotiate your way into getting the most value out of the deal, and what you should watch out for to prevent deals from falling through.

This Cast Covers:

A horrific story about mergers and acquisitions that prompted Todd to speak about this on the podcast (01:28)
What’s mostly missing from these deals that are vital to know when selling your agency (05:15)
Is narrowing down in a niche important in being acquired or does it differ among industries? (08:50)
The most valuable thing an acquirer looks for to maximize your multiples when you do exit (12:54)
Why you better have a signed letter of intent with your chosen acquirer (13:44)
When you sign a letter of intent with somebody, those guys should be ecstatic that they were chosen as the acquirer because a couple of things will happen (13:44)
Most common mistakes Todd sees agency owners making when getting on deals (13:55)
Two critical things when looking at the size of EBITDA you should consider before selling your agency (18:17)
Two key concepts that you need to know so you don’t lose a great deal of money in an acquisition (18:51)
How to handle “deal fatigue” - a normal phenomenon most agency owners experience when going through the motions (24:43)
What founders should be optimizing in their agencies today before considering being acquired (32:04)
How important is EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) versus contract link and SD (seller discretionary)?
Having these operations and systems in place before the acquisition will make the process run a whole lot smoother and easier (33:34)
Are acquisitions a strategic play to grow their business or creating more havoc for an agency? (40:41)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Second Bite Podcast
Todd Taskey on Linkedin
Potomac Business Capital

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Most agency owners hire a sales rep without going through any process and telling them to just go do everything. Furthermore, on top of them being highly inefficient and ineffective, you are also asking them to perform non-revenue generating tasks without setting them up for success or providing them with any form of enablement or administration. If you’re wondering how you might lift all this extra weight from your sales reps’ shoulders and allow them to be customer-facing in a way that adds value and closes deals, then this episode is for you.

In today’s episode, learn how to make cold calling work, how to best equip your sales reps, and Joey and JJ’s advice for training your salespeople throughout the entire sales cycle.

What’s in Joey’s glass: E.H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel Bourbon

What’s in JJ’s glass: Knob Creek Small Batch 9 Year Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

Joey’s weekend plans up in North Tennessee (03:06)
Does cold calling actually work? (08:33)
What you should be looking at to determine if it’s a good strategy (09:44)
Joey’s strategy for cold calling (11:52)
How to get the other person’s attention in the first five seconds (13:01)
One of the really good cold callers that are worth following on Linkedin - Ryan Reisert (14:57)
What most salespeople get wrong about cold calling (16:31)
The one thing all salespeople are missing when they develop and run their campaigns (16:58)
Why hiring a sales admin or sales assistant is such a good investment (20:13)
How to enable your super employee - in this case, the high impact salespeople that make them super unique and valuable (21:27)
Is getting someone to come in and do the non-revenue-generating activities to free up more time for the salespeople same as sales enablement? (26:58)
Where do sales admin come in into the organizational chart in your ideal sales operation? (27:27)
Two types of sales team models and which is preferred by agencies (34:24)
Why Joey prefers to hire and train his team into full-cycle salespeople and support them with admins over hiring or outsourcing the SDR-AE model (39:42)
Why agencies have a hard time building trust (43:15)
What’s it like for Joey and JJ to be on the other side of the sales conversation (52:17)
How Joey’s doing after joining Andy Frisella’s 75 Hard Challenge (1:02:47)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Johnny Ward is the CEO and co-founder of Damage - The Esports Agency, a creative marketing agency that focuses on assisting brands in navigating the gaming, eSports, and streaming space. His goal was to show business owners this elevated, creative, and content production in this industry.

In this episode, Johnny talks about how his agency was formed and how they can effectively engage in the community of gaming, esports, and streaming. Additionally, he shares how his agency can assist endemic and non-endemic businesses in getting their brand recognized.

This Cast Covers:

Introduction to Johnny Ward and his all-star team and partners that make up Damage - The eSports Agency (2:53)
How he strategically categorizes traditional gaming, competitive eSports, and streaming for much on-point target audiences (5:25)
The turning point that made Damage come to life (8:13)
Identifying your audience's demographics (10:59)
Capturing the community to become brand evangelists (13:36)
Why traditional agencies don't understand the business of gaming and eSports (16:12)
How Damage exceeded their clients' expectations on viewership and fan participation (18:58)
Johnny is open to collaborating with other agencies (23:09)
On managing business growth and focusing on sales (27:46)
Getting the most out of his networks: defining contacts from leads (33:34)
Use of cloud-based CRM for his tagging system (37:30)
How agencies can level up by entering the gaming, esports, and streaming space (41:36)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Damage - eSports Agency
Follow Johnny Ward on Linkedin

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In this episode, we talk about one of the favorite things we do for other agencies - finding the low-hanging fruits, organizing their CRM, and helping them increase win rate (how many people in your pipeline do you close, and what is that ratio?). Plus, we go deep on investment buckets, writing an obituary, and viewing life from the eyes of not just an agency owner or founder but as a man of purpose and integrity.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Chattanooga Whiskey 111 Cask

What’s in JJ’s glass: Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

How the guys inside the Best Damn Mastermind are crushing it and gifting llamas to their sales reps (07:50)
Building and sharing wealth investments and how Joey invests personally (09:44)
Sitting inside a studio building owned by Joey and plans to sell for 3x returns (15:10)
Why investing in coaches can yield you infinite returns (17:25)
How to break up with a prospect and what should the end goal look like? (20:09)
Joey’s personal email advice for when a prospect ghosts you (22:43)
The rationale behind revival campaigns and why they’re so effective (26:57)
Creating a new prospect list from your old list of deals you lost in the past (28:56)
Finding that low-hanging fruit as soon as you start working with new clients (30:19)
Using a one-size-fits-all revival campaign (33:49)
Why offer stacking is so crucial (36:20)
How are sales teams converting and what should it look like? (39:48)
What are Joey and JJ most excited about in their lives right now? (48:24)
Power, Passion, Purpose, Production, Presence (54:28)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Gray MacKenzie is the CEO and founder of ZenPilot, which is an agency training business that gives digital agency teams the structure they need to grow quickly and sustainably. As they grew their agency (GuavaBox), they helped other agency owners accelerate their journey. Today, Gray MacKenzie and his company, ZenPilot, have helped over 1,800 agencies grow sustainably.

Through testing 71 project management tools, they ended up finding ClickUp to be by far the best project management tool, which helps agencies centralize their applications and streamline their process, allowing everyone to work together seamlessly.

In this episode, we are going to learn how Gray helps agencies streamline their operations by using ClickUp for project management, the reasons why larger and smaller agencies struggle when it comes to streamlining, systemizing business operations, and why value-based outcomes are more important than output when estimating business success.

This Cast Covers:

What Gray does in helping agencies streamline operations (01:20)
Using ClickUp as the main project management tool to centralize agencies' apps (01:34)
Growing GuavaBox agency is a challenge that helps them accelerate their journey (01:43)
A quick recap of how Joey and Gray got connected (01:53)
Gray's 11 years journey into the agency space and how ZenPilot was born (03:40)
Gray’s going through 71 different project management tools before arriving at Clickup (05:36)
Naval Ravikant's "Get rich without getting lucky" - A breakdown of 4 types of luck (06:11)
ClickUp’s successful raising of 100 million dollars at a billion-dollar valuation in December (08:06)
Asana vs ClickUp for agencies: Why these two tools are fairly comparable today in terms of features (08:30)
What challenges do bigger and smaller agencies face when it comes to streamlining, systemizing business operations? (12:06)
A bit more challenging with bigger teams: Gray's experience with a large agency of 120 employees (17:40)
The most valuable assets that you can create in your sales process (20:39)
The strategies and future of ZenPilot for assisting agencies in achieving sustainable growth (25:50)
Addressing agency owners who trade a lot of time for money and the importance of value-based pricing than output-based pricing in business (29:14)
Paying for Output vs. Outcomes: What's more important? (31:17)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
ZenPilot
Gray on Linkedin
Naval Ravikant's "Get Rich Without Getting Lucky"

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Today's market is saturated more than ever with marketing agencies of all sizes. As a result, there is a really high chance of the commoditization of services. And if you do not know how to differentiate yourself from every other agency out there, unfortunately, you’ll end up in a race to the bottom. So what can you do to avoid being seen as a commodity? If you're thinking of ways to stand out from the agency crowd, gain an edge, and find your own blue ocean to swim in, then this episode is for you.

Joey dives deep into defining how digital agencies should be positioning themselves in order to achieve exponential revenue growth, how to come up with a no-competition positioning statement, why marketing and sales teams should work together, and why nice guys can definitely win at sales.

What’s in Joey’s Glass: Wilderness Trail Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Single Barrel Bottled In Bond

What’s in JJ’s Glass: Buffalo Trace Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Joey and JJ discuss their favorite holiday drinks (02:49)
The most crucial pieces when it comes to increasing pipeline, winning more businesses, and increasing your client value (09:35)
Why so many agencies are swimming in a red ocean and cannot find their blue ocean (10:03)
The Blue Ocean Strategy (10:56)
How to carve out a space for yourself where there's not a whole lot of competition (11:05)
Why positioning affects sales, the sales departments, sales outcomes, and what It means to plant your flag in a specific niche (14:03)
Exercises on how agencies can begin thinking about their positioning and messaging (22:39)
How to find that sweet spot intersection of the market or industry you want to serve (23:11)
The four elements you need in coming up with your no competition positioning statement (25:08)
A quick hack when it comes to driving authority and credibility using email signatures (30:59)
Ways to transition or translate your newfound positioning into marketing? (33:40)
How Joey thought about who he wanted to serve and how he would serve them before starting his own agency (36:34)
What to do if you’re still uncertain of planting your flag in a niche or industry and how to validate an offer (38:22)
If your marketing and sales teams don’t get along, here’s what you can do (40:00)
Can nice guys win at sales? (50:38)
Why the most powerful thing you can do for your life is to take ownership (52:31)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind

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Shane Hunter is the Abrasive Entrepreneur. He is a marketing strategist that teaches folks how to define their brand, advertise, market, writes copy, build an email list & online following, and how to convert that list & following into a recurring 5-6 figure income each month. Shane is also a renowned Facebook advertising expert, Oklahoma Extreme Mustang Makeover Open 2021 Champion, and 2021 Vegas TIP Challenge & Open Winner.

In this episode, Shane defines what abrasivism means, where and how he came up with the ideology, why it’s not necessarily a negative thing, how he teaches it to his students to advertise and sell their services or products as well as build a loyal following, and how you can apply this ideology to differentiate yourself and wipe out your competition as a digital agency owner or founder.

This Cast Covers:

Shane defines what abrasivism is and shares how he became the Abrasive Entrepreneur (01:44)
Was Shane always an abrasive type of guy? (02:56)
Why the more genuine you are, the more people are willing to stand by you (03:57)
Applying the law of combinatorics into making you the number one at a unique combination of skills (07:11)
How to wipe out your competition the badass way (09:25)
Shane’s thoughts on cancel culture and how it’s a balancing act to be abrasive and not rubbing people the wrong way (12:19)
How to not care about the people who dislike you and attracting your “1000 raving fans” instead (15:00)
Why it’s never a good idea to be a clone or copy somebody (17:36)
Using authentic and abrasive branding to successfully break out from an old type of branding as a digital marketing agency owner (19:00)
A very risqué but effective example of Shane’s ads that broke the norm and was wildly successful (27:00)
How Shane became TikTok viral by being kicked in the dick by a wild horse (30:09)
How to create attention-grabbing and compelling campaigns (36:58)
The exact strategy and elements you need to put together to get that oh so satisfying click (40:50)
How to target the right audience for your advertising (45:53)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Abrasive Entrepreneur
Abrasivism by Shane Hunter

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If you’ve always wanted to know how a sales agency founder and CEO compensates and incentivizes his salespeople, then this episode is for you. Get to know Joey’s thoughts on commissions, incentives, compensation, why he thinks bonuses should be given in private, and why participation trophies are lame.

In this episode, we talk about fancy bourbon, badass cars, attractive compensation plans, and sexy scripts and frameworks.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Jefferson's Grand Selection 'Chateau Pichon Baron French Oak Cask Finish' Straight Bourbon Whiskey

What’s in JJ’s glass: Old Grand-Dad Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

The car brand Joey currently has set eyes upon, Rezvani Motors (06:35)
Thoughts on bonuses, cash bonuses, and prizes, and compensation for sales reps (11:47)
Why Joey values cash flow and amortized payments more than lump-sum payments (12:37)
Why most salespeople are more typically money-driven than other roles (14:38)
Unexpected incentives or bonuses (18:17)
Why we tend to neglect thinking through what sounds good when we have more than five or six employees in the agency (19:48)
Why Joey thinks bonusing should be done in private (20:20)
Issues that could come out from incentivizing sales performance and why you should avoid doing that (22:24)
Joey lays out the exact framework he uses when meeting with a prospect on an FTA (first-time-appointment) (35:09)
Teach, tailor, take control (37:03)
How to extract the vital information from your prospects in the first 5-7 minutes of your initial conversation. (38:05)
The framework: rapport, agenda, context, qualifications (40:50)
One crucial step you’re missing on a call that ruins your chances of closing a deal with your prospects (43:10)
What Sales Driven Agency’s sales process currently looks like (46:27)
Goals you want to hit when you bring in a new salesperson into your agency (50:49)
What first performance-based benchmark Joey looks for in a new sales rep hire (53:48)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Gap Selling by Keenan

Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price

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Cory Botti is the founder and CEO of Lockhern Digital, a digital media agency specializing in Google & Bing Ads management, Google shopping, remarketing, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Amazon Search. Having earned a Masters degree in Entrepreneurship from Baruch College, Cory was dedicated to launching his own business. With years of experience working in digital marketing, he decided it was time to develop his own vision of creating the 'perfect' SEM strategy and build a company that would mirror his values, outlook, and vigor.

In this episode, Cory sits down with us to talk about his affinity for entrepreneurship at a very young age, marrying that with his expertise in digital marketing to found Lockhern Digital and the major driver for their agency’s explosive growth.

This Cast Covers:

What Cory and his cofounder Aric attribute to Lockhern Digital’s rocket ship growth (03:58)
How specializing in Google Shopping has worked in their favor (05:54)
Agencies are either weeds who focus on client acquisition or oak trees who focus on client retention, and sometimes they’re both (07:26)
How Cory has gotten to a point in his journey as an agency owner where it's not a monetary pursuit anymore(09:18)
Recalling his natural sales skills and entrepreneurial mindset even as a little boy selling his used toys to neighbors (13:40)
What getting a Masters degree in Entrepreneurship taught him about business (18:27)
Cory’s plans for Lockhern Digital in the future (22:06)
Letting your clients see the vision of working with you for the long term (25:14)
Cory’s advice for founders thinking actively about growing their agency in 2021 (25:57)
Where the entire team at Lockhern Digital gets all of their passion working with different brands and clients (29:22)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Cory Botti on Linkedin
Lockhern Digital

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In this episode, we discuss how to hire for the right sales leadership roles, how to build out your sales operation from scratch, tools we use in our own sales engagement and outbound outreach, and Joey’s thoughts on list buying.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Willett Family Estate Bottled 4 Year Rye

What’s in JJ’s glass: Mixed Berry Meringue Peerless® Single Barrel Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

How JJ and Joey spent Fathers Day (01:01)
Dispelling the myth that one person should be responsible for building out, operating, leading, and managing a sales team or sales operation, (07:34)
The worst mistake founders make when they hire for sales leadership roles (09:22)
How to strategically identify which role you should hire first (11:33)
The real reason why many agencies don't have a good sales operation (13:57)
How to designate jobs, roles, and titles and do away with most of the confusion in a sales operation (15:46)
What you should ask yourself if you’re thinking of hiring a VP of Sales (18:22)
How to self-audit your sales process if you can’t hire an outside sales agency to come in and help you (21:01)
Why you should always start with documentation (22:14)
Running a self-assessment as an agency owner of your sales operation even if you’ve never seen a top-shelf sales operation before (25:40)
Specific tools we use at the Sales Driven Agency for sales engagement, outbound sales, and CRMs (32:38)
Is buying lists a worthwhile endeavor? (41:23)
A little teaser of the magic happening inside the Best Damn Agency Mastermind (50:42)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Who Not How by Dan Sullivan

Tools Mentioned in this Episode:

Pipedrive
Outplay
Calendly
PandaDoc
lemlist
Apollo.io
Seamless.ai
Neverbounce
HubSpot

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Alex Membrillo is the CEO of Cardinal, a digital marketing agency focused on growing multi-location companies. Their services include search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, Facebook Ads, web design, and more to increase leads, conversions, and authority for their clients.

Alex Membrillo has been recognized as a member of the 2018 Top 40 Under 40 list by Georgia State University as well as 2015 and 2016 Top 20 Entrepreneur of metro Atlanta by TiE Atlanta, Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2016 Small Business Person of the Year, and Digital Marketer of the Year by Technology Association of Georgia (TAG).

In this episode, we sit down with Alex Membrillo to discuss his journey as a digital marketing agency CEO, bouncing back from losing clients in 2016, and specific areas he invested in his agency, Cardinal Digital, to become a successful business.

This Cast Covers:

The reason for Cardinal Digital's success (03:34)
A look back at Alex's ups and downs running the agency (06:58)
How they bounced back from losing their two biggest clients, which was 75% of their revenue (07:05)
Why the agency owner should take more risk on (09:34)
The growing pains Alex has begun to see when the agency tripled in size in a relatively short time (10:46)
Which investments paid off and what moved the needle fastest for Cardinal Digital (13:10)
Keeping up momentum when your agency grows really fast (18:18)
How to improve conversions and win rates (21:05)
Alex talks about Cardinal Digital's long-term goals (25:08)
What Alex has done personally that has sharpened him as a person (27:08)
His views on improving your mindset as a digital agency owner (28:07)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Cardinal Digital

View Details

In this episode, we discuss overcoming the feeling that you suck at sales, the greatest mistakes agencies commit when hiring salespeople and sales teams, and even Joey's big sales fail! We also cover why he favors younger-experienced salespeople and those that don't come from enterprise sales environments when hiring, and how you as an agency owner can guide a greener, younger hire through closing high-ticket, high-stakes deals.

What’s in Joey’s glass: E.H. Taylor, Jr. Single Barrel Bourbon

What’s in JJ’s glass: David Nicholson 1843 Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

This Cast Covers:

Is there anything Joey can’t sell? (5:46)
How much of the ability to sell is a gift and how much of it is learned? (07:06)
Has Joey ever bombed a sale? (10:29)
What Joey learned from his dad about sales (12:45)
Why you don’t need to have the bravado to be good at sales (14:27)
Joey’s advice for those struggling in sales (15:51)
Why most sales successes come from repetitions (18:43)
The “power hour” (19:24)
The costs of getting the sales rep hiring process wrong (24:10)
What to look for when hiring sales reps or sales teams (25:00)
The biggest mistake that agency owners making in general (26:17)
Why having a rock-solid sales process is better than hiring a rock-solid salesperson (28:14)
Joey’s aversion towards hiring people who've come from a big enterprise or large sales environment (32:23)
How to transition a young sales rep to a more consultative sale with a lot of moving parts and high stakes (34:56)
Getting the sales rep to sell a foot in the door offer will essentially lead him to close the high-ticket deals (37:30)
What Joey would be doing if he were not running Sales Driven Agency (41:47)
The one goal Joey is most excited about when he wakes up everyday (43:56)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin
The Challenger Sale

The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation

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Shaun Clark is the CEO and co-founder of HighLevel, a full suite platform for agencies. They bring all the tools an agency needs such as a CRM, funnel builder, marketing automation, content delivery, calendar, membership platform, etc., into one place, as well as automate the process of capturing, nurturing, and closing leads.

Shaun’s vision for HighLevel is to get every marketing agency out there equipped to just crush it in their vertical or in their market or in their local area, wherever they serve, with everybody that they come across, both on the service side and on the software side.

This Cast Covers:

Shaun’s journey before HighLevel ever came to fruition (03:24)
How HighLevel shifted from serving small business owners to serving agencies serving small businesses (05:04)
The problem of most lead-gen type agencies is retention (06:09)
How HighLevel functions as an all-in-one integrator for all necessities (07:16)
The SaaS agency opportunity all agencies should be taking advantage of (09:51)
How to deal with churn or share of revenue problems (10:10)
A perfect example of a company driving revenue through SaaS (13:51)
Shaun’s take on agencies who struggle to be an all-in-one platform (14:44)
How agencies use HighLevel to run client acquisition and growth for their funnels (19:32)
How to address the problem of following up and focusing on win rate rather than generating more leads (21:28)
An interesting study by MIT on the factors that ultimately make the sale from web-based leads (22:27)
Joey attests to the fact that following up with a lead in the first hour can increase conversion by 70%
The caveat of automating anything and everything without any real thought (25:26)
Engagement tactics to get insane reply rates via message or cold email (26:03)
Doing outbound and providing value easily with just a click of a button (30:13)
Where HighLevel is headed two to five years from now (31:46)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
GoHighLevel

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We're back with another exciting episode of the Sales on the Rocks segment with me and JJ Russell, my Senior Client Advisor over at Sales Driven Agency. Today, we talked about value-based pricing, communicating your value effectively, and why you should never, ever, under any circumstance, ask your sales team or sales rep to take a backseat and stop selling.

What’s in Joey’s glass: Chattanooga Whiskey Experimental Batch Limited Edition Single Barrel

What’s in JJ’s glass: Knob Creek Small Batch 9 Year Bourbon

This Cast Covers:

Top reasons you should never tell a sales rep or sales team to slow down or pull back (03:06)
What you can do instead of asking your sales team to slow down (04:35)
Different levels you can pull in your agency that would not require your sales team to take a backseat but still equal or increase revenue - leads, win rate, client value (05:24)
What are the signs you're overpricing yourself? (06:26)
Understanding how value-based pricing affects the sales conversation (08:38)
Why trying to grow your business by charging hourly is a foolish idea (10:43)
The best way to communicate the impact and value you bring to your clients (11:57)
Demonstrating your value clearly and effectively without using slides (13:14)
Why you should know what's important to your customers (13:23)
Why Joey dislikes slides and sales decks and what he suggests you do instead (14:19)
The benefits of creating some type of impact proforma for clients (17:25)
Joey's favorite sales phrase to use when the client is still caught up on price (18:13)
Some of the best agency sales operations we’ve seen in the space (20:05)
Joey is put on the hot seat and asked if he has ever encountered someone that he couldn’t help (22:03)
Funny story about Joey turning down a client at the last minute (24:14)
Incentivizing your employee or sales rep to care first about the well-being of the team instead of their commission or short-term gain (28:18)
Qualifying your leads the right way (31:34)
Joey dives into the startup and shutdown routine (33:25)
Why we should be maximizing for outcomes and not activities (36:33)
The need to take care of yourself first as a sales representative, agency owner, or entrepreneur (39:57)
What Joey enjoys most about sales and working with sales-driven agencies (43:20)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Marty McDonald is the co-founder and CEO of Bad Rhino Inc, an award-winning, full-service social media marketing and digital agency based in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Among Bad Rhino's clients are specialty food companies, craft beer manufacturers, restaurants, golf courses, insurance companies, staffing agencies, apparel manufacturers, fitness clubs, Fortune 500 companies, and Major League Baseball players.

Marty started out as a headhunter and used social media strategies to actively recruit and build online marketing businesses for over 18 years. He has since then consulted with small businesses and startups to help them succeed online. He is also the author of Great Beer is Not Enough and the host of the Taps and Tees Podcast.

In this episode, Marty McDonald discusses his journey towards becoming the CEO and co-founder of Bad Rhino, advising clients on the appropriate use of social media for their business, and pricing strategies for agencies.

This Cast Covers:

Marty talks golf gear and his fanboy obsession with the brand Vessel (02:24)
The crazy story of how he got 18 clients instantaneously all because he opened his mouth at a networking event (07:10)
How Bad Rhino started in 2010 and growing the business 11 years later (08:33)
The agency’s impressive revenue and margins despite having a small team (10:26)
Being able to enjoy life and still work really hard is the luxury of CEO life (13:30)
Why most agencies fall into the trap of charging their clients too little for their services (16:27)
Ignoring the opportunity costs and why you should be incredibly dialed in on who you work with (20:29)
Why it’s better to “rock the boat” early on with your clients (21:28)
Knowing the true value of your services and charging your worth (27:00)
Joey summarizes a three-hour podcast about how we are number one in something in the world (31:45)
Marty gives a sneak peek of the new stuff Bad Rhino will be putting out soon (33:48)
The movement towards “done with you” services and leveraging wisdom, not labor (37:23)
The dangers of lacking a holistic digital marketing strategy (40:57)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Bad Rhino

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In this episode, we look back on how JJ and I first met, how he became my Client Advisor for my company, Sales Driven Agency, addressing common sales objections, account-based selling, founder-based selling, and the Trust Transaction Ladder. Whether you're the CEO or founder of a 7 to 8-figure agency or you're still building out your company, you'll definitely get something out of this episode.

This Cast Covers:

A quick recap of how we got acquainted (04:30)
What we’re drinking at the moment (06:45)
Why most agency owners are reluctant to try outbound sales (11:10)
Is outbound sales really effective for digital agencies? (12:11)
Joey breaks down the basic definition of sales (14:14)
How do you build trust when reaching out to possible prospects? (16:20)
The 2 types of sales most B2B companies practice (16:30)
Why we recommend doing account-based selling (17:40)
How to overcome the challenges in doing cold outreach (27:02)
The Trust Transaction Ladder (29:03)
When is the right time to hire a sales team or salesperson? (32:04)
Why startup agency owners should focus on becoming a founder-based seller (35:58)
Investing in yourself is probably the greatest investment you will ever make (36:36)
Things to consider before hiring salespeople (37:23)
What’s worth investing in if you’re a growth-minded CEO (39:47)
Why I prioritize investing heavily on a personal business coach, mentors, and masterminds (44:42)
The 5 categories of investments you can make as a leader (46:51)
Why success is 80% mindset, and only 20% strategy and skills (48:24)
JJ talks about how being in the Sales Driven Agency was a mindset shift for him (51:20)
Addressing a common fear of agency owners who don’t want to invest in their people (55:43)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
The Best Damn Agency Mastermind
Connect with JJ on Linkedin

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Brian Onorio is the Founder and CTO of the full-service digital-first marketing agency Walk West, based in Raleigh, NC. He founded the privately-owned company in 2007 and today, the company specializes in research discovery, web design and development, social media marketing, content strategy and marketing, SEO, SEM, digital issue advocacy, video production, and professional development services. Brian is also the CEO of Proposa, a world-class service that makes it easy to create professional-looking proposals while reducing the amount of time it takes to create them.

During his time as a John T. Caldwell Fellow at North Carolina State University (and subsequently as Vice President of the Caldwell Fellows Alumni Society), Brian has lived the program's tenets to learn, grow, and serve others. Many of his industry awards, including those from the AVA, Marcom, and Hermes Associations as well as the Triangle Business Journal's "40 Under 40" Award, reflect his commitment to those same servant-leader traits. As a member of the Shop Raleigh board, he was able to gain insights into how to collaborate with local organizations and further your agency's expertise.

Brian talks about how he got into the agency space, building his own company from the ground up, the mistake of doing things alone in his first 7 years of the business up until scaling the agency, earning triple to quadruple their revenue, and handling the challenges that presented themselves during that point as well. Brian also gives his insights on why most agencies fail in their first five years of starting and how to prevent burnout when growing a fast-scaling company by hiring the right people and collaborating with the right mentors, advisors, and colleagues in the agency space.

This Cast Covers:

Starting an agency after quitting his job at 24 and at the worst possible time: during the 2008 economic crisis (1:09)
Growing pains of starting a company and then becoming a fast-growing scaling agency that most agency owners rarely talk about (4:07)
Why 92% of agencies fail within the first 5 years of starting and their biggest rate for failure (5:58)
A valuable lesson Brian learned about shutting up and setting up his team for success (6:52)
How to create leverage as the owner in the company to avoid burnout (8:15)
Closing the agency’s biggest deal of business without him ever having a conversation with the client (10:31)
Why it’s okay to relinquish some control and letting your team shine in areas they’re good at (12:56)
Are you afraid to pay top dollar for the right people? (15:27)
Why it took Brian seven years to value investing in mentors and advisors (17:34)
When growth-driven agencies consult Brian’s help to achieve operational excellence (21:55)
Tell-tale signs that an agency needs to get an advisor or consultant to come in and help (25:01)
Getting back to the fundamentals of generating leads, nurturing and closing leads (29:30)
Why every single problem in your agency can be solved with revenue (32:18)
Using consulting work rather than agency work as a client acquisition model (34:57)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Brian Onorio on Linkedin
Walk West

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In this episode, Chris discusses how he rapidly grew the agency through strategic partnerships and how he focuses most of his time now being the face of the company. We also talk about his daily activities as the CEO of his agency, how he spends most of his valuable time, and where Rankings.io is headed into the future.

This Cast Covers:

How Rankings.io stands out in a supersaturated law firm SEO space (02:03)
How the agency rapidly grew to $9 to $10 million in revenue despite having a very lean team (03:49)
Benefits to working with strategic partners (05:37)
Structuring the team as a hierarchy and slightly different from most agencies (8:45)
Why you want to be a CEO that’s optional (09:37)
How Chris uses his podcast to build authority and to generate leads (13:40)
Chris’s plans for the future of rankings.io (20:17)
The good problems the company currently faces such as reducing the number of accounts their managers handle (21:07)
He describes what his typical day is like as CEO of an agency (23:09)
Why collaboration and having an abundance mindset is so important to Chris (28:21)
Various reading and mindset challenges Chris sets for himself everyday (32:01)
Joey goes into the specific biological neural pathways our brain works to give us what we want (34:50)
The number one thing that gets in the way of you achieving success as an agency owner (38:42)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Rankings.io
BiggerPockets Podcast with Brandon Turner and David Greene
Patrick Bet-David Podcast with Patrik Bet-David
Cardone Zone Podcast with Grant Cardone
Ready, Aim, Fire by Michael Masterson

Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat

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Robert Nickell is the Founder and CEO of Rocket Station, the leading provider of outsourced staffing and process management for the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. Operating in Dallas Ft Worth since 2013, Rocket Station helps small to mid-sized businesses hire virtual teams with efficiency and profitability. Simplified staffing allows operators to focus on core competencies and outsource the rest.

Robert started his career as an entrepreneur in the real estate industry which has positioned him to support many real estate entrepreneurs and established firms who are struggling with staffing and human resources. Robert and his team’s strength in evaluating best practices and efficient ways to staff capacity have continued to propel Rocket Station. When not helping clients build better businesses, you’ll find Robert traveling the world or hanging out with his nephews in Dallas.

In this episode, Robert shares how he was able to build Rocket Station of nearly 1000 employees out of his frustrations as a business owner and how they now help their clients scale up through effective hiring, training, and outsourcing strategies. We learn that by defining and getting clear on what the problem is in the business, it becomes much easier from there to find solutions and work on creating systems and processes.

This Cast Covers:

Robert shares his own frustrations in running a business when he started out (2:42)
How he discovered a crucial step he was missing in hiring, training and managing people that changed the game for him and his business (5:24)
Coming up with a formula for success or a 4-step process for every client partner (5:40)
How Rocket Station grew from zero employees to 800 employees (8:21)
Why most agency owners and employees waste their time doing the $10/hour tasks instead of focusing on the $2,000/hour tasks (10:03)
Why having an extremely poor structure in your business makes it impossible to function 100%
What you’re really missing out on when you don’t fire yourself from sales or admin tasks (14:53)
How handing off administrative tasks can allow you to get back more emotional bandwidth and space to think more creatively (15:46)
Growth in three categories: leads, win rate, client value (18:03)
Robert walks us through the 4-step process they would do if they were ever to come in and help Sales Driven Agency (23:31)
Step one: Discovery and alignment phase (28:00)
Step two: Creating systems and process stack (28:40)
Step three: Identifying what to delegate and outsource and finding a member that’s going to fit into that role (30:06)
Step four: Onboarding and accountability (31:25)
Your employees are not an expense, they’re an asset

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Rocket Station

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Justin Christianson is the co-founder and President of Conversion Fanatics, a full-service conversion rate optimization company, helping companies improve their results. They focus on delivering top and bottom-line performance for leading e-commerce companies (Including Burt’s Bees, Dr. Axe, Clorox, and the NBA store).

He is also a serial entrepreneur, a digital marketing veteran, Father, Husband, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of Conversion Fanatic: How to Double your Customers, Sales, and Profits with A/B Testing.

In this episode, I spoke with Justin about his experiences going through an acquisition and the lessons he’s learned from it. We also discussed how Conversion Fanatics handled this process and what led to its success.

This Cast Covers:

Justin’s journey in the digital marketing space and scaling Conversion Fanatics into a profitable company serving almost 50 active clients 11 years in the making (02:12)
Where Justin would invest in if he were to sell Conversion Fanatics tomorrow (05:56)
Biggest misconception agency owners have regarding mergers and acquisitions (09:31)
Justin recalls his experiences of Conversion Fanatics going through an acquisition (13:38)
Why Justin advises against romanticizing about an inquisition (27:42)
How he grew Conversion Fanatics by writing a book(29:36)
Why Justin doesn’t believe in silver bullet tactics and prefers principles that never go out of style if you want to build and grow an agency for the long-term sustainably (34:48)
What most businesses think when they hear the word sales (41:20)
How Justin went from submitting a 20-page fancy analysis PDFs that no one would read to closing deals with just a straightforward 6-page proposal (44:54)
Why we love to overcomplicate things and why that doesn’t really translate to success in business (46:22)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Conversion Fanatics
Justin Christianson
Conversion Fanatic
Justin's LinkedIn

Conversion Fanatic: How To Double Your Customers, Sales and Profits With A/B Testing

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Kevin is the co-founder and Principal, Account Strategy at Vert Digital, an award-winning, full-service digital marketing agency based in Atlanta Georgia. They specialize in paid media, website design & development, social strategy, & email marketing.

In addition to building digital businesses for leading brands like Amazon, First Watch Restaurants, and RentPath, he is also a member of the UGA’s New Media Institute’s Steering Committee & advises a few start-up digital companies in Atlanta.

This episode focuses on agency growth, thinking more big-picture and long-term ways to scale the business, and avoiding silver bullet tactics all the time. We also discuss how to drive referrals with existing clients to get more control of your pipeline.

This Cast Covers:

Having a knack for “making something from nothing” even at a very young age (01:48)
Why Kevin pursued advertising at the University of Georgia (04:01)
Falling in love with the New Media Institute which became the inspiration for Vert Digital (04:14)
How Vert Digital grew from exploring digital technologies into the success it is now (05:39)
The challenges of being an agency owner and having to wear multiple hats (06:45)
How Vert Digital stood out despite an increasingly saturated market (08:46)
Kevin lists the 4 things that determine whether Vert Digital is a good fit for you (10:30)
What the agency is doing to find their ideal clients (12:20)
Why Kevin hates requests for proposal (RFPs) (15:22)
The squeeze offer Vert Digital uses to determine whether or not a client could be a long-term potential business partner (18:22)
Why humility is required in successful partnerships (22:28)
Building an agency that will be around decades from now and who was the catalyst for this idea (27:10)
Having steadfast personal values that tie in with the rest of the agency (33:11)
Vert Digital’s challenges and how they plan to overcome them (36:40)
Joey’s system and process of driving referrals with current existing clients (40:54)
Vert Digital’s plans in the next few years as the excitement for digital rises (44:43)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Vert Digital
Kevin Planovsky
Offbeatmedia group
The Challenger Customer
Podia

The Challenger Customer: Selling to the Hidden Influencer Who Can Multiply Your Results

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Travis Bliffen founded Stellar SEO, a US search marketing agency based in Franklin, Tennessee specializing in link building and inbound for competitive niche markets.

He has spent several years working in the field of online marketing and has a strong background in link building and on page SEO. An Army veteran, Travis read about the future of SEO in a magazine and decided to go into SEO for himself. Since establishing Stellar SEO in 2012, they have quickly gained a reputation for being a cost-effective, trustworthy, and leading SEO agency. In addition to being a featured speaker at conferences like SEMPO Cities and other industry events, Travis is a published writer on SEO and link building.

Just this February, they launched a new division, offering end to end SEO services exclusive to law firms. In this episode, we learn why Travis decided to launch another department, how he grew the firm from 1 to 53 employees in 9 years, what they’re investing in to scale the agency, and the challenges and obstacles of expanding Stellar SEO.

This Cast Covers:

Travis’s interest in sports and videogames as a child and having no interest whatsoever in business and marketing (04:43)
Joining the army for 4 years continued to fuel his stubborn, competitive spirit (07:21)
How he started freelancing and discovered SEO from picking up a magazine (08:04)
Founding Stellar SEO in 2012 without experience or money and growing a team from 1 to 53 people (10:27)
His struggle starting out without knowing who to hire and what skills to look for (12:13)
How Stellar SEO’s methodology of growth to where they’re at now (15:22)
Playing to their strengths in inbound marketing, SEO, content marketing and guest blogging to grow their client base and revenue (15:55)
Travis’s decision-making process for trying to build outbound sales process (18:58)
How to close the gap between inbound and outbound sales (25:24)
Where Stellar SEO is headed and what obstacles they’re trying to figure out right now (36:09)
Finding the sweet spot of targeting the right market using tactics and strategy (39:23)
Why sometimes taking on too many new clients can hurt the agency (43:12)
Focusing on sustainable, realistic growth while driving predictable revenue (41:21)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Stellar SEO
Travis on Linkedin

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Mel Carson is the CEO and founder of Delightful Communications, an award-winning B2B Technology Marketing Agency based in Seattle and London. It specializes in Video Production, Content Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Branding services.

He began his digital advertising career as an editor at the search engine LookSmart in 2000, spending time at 24/7 Search as an Account Director before moving to Microsoft in 2005. He was part of the team that planned & executed the UK roll-out of Microsoft adCenter in August 2006. After 7 years at Microsoft as their Digital Evangelist, Mel departed in 2012 to launch Delightful Communications in Seattle.

Over the years he has presented at over a hundred conferences and lectured on MBA, MSc, and online marketing courses, regularly advising curriculum decision-makers at Cranfield School of Management, Birkbeck College, as well as the University of Washington. He has also been featured in a fantastic array of top publications, including The Financial Times, Fast Company, The Next Web, Forbes, GQ, Quartz, USA Today, PR Daily, and Entrepreneur.com.

Mel shares his path from being the face of Microsoft to heading his digital agency and helping B2B company leaders become spread through their influence in their industry, and why improving your mindset, taking care of your people, and continuous learning are some of the smartest decisions you can ever make to grow your business.

This Cast Covers:

How Mel began his digital advertising career before becoming the face of Microsoft (02:06)
How moving to Seattle and getting laid off from Microsoft ended up being an unexpected blessing (03:03)
What led him to start Delightful Communications (04:32)
Why Delightful focuses on B2B technology marketing for enterprise companies (06:53)
How he handles setbacks and challenges in the industry, such as clients pulling back budget or canceling in the middle of the pandemic (13:13)
How attending a coaching course at the iPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching) changed his mindset and how that affected the way he ran his agency (15:01)
Why Mel believes working on the mindset is so important (18:54)
Losing around 25 pounds during the pandemic through physical exercise (20:18)
The secret to the success of Delightful Communications (28:18)
How people find Delightful Communications and how they acquire and retain businesses (29:58)
The challenge with coaching the sales training team (35:58)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Mel Carson
Delightful Communications

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My guest today is Jacques Spitzer, CEO and Founder of the San Diego-based full-service branding and advertising firm Raindrop. Over the past decade, Raindrop has helped more than six direct-to-consumer brands grow by millions in just months and are responsible for creating the top-performing ad of 2020 on Youtube. Among their clients include WORX, Omigo, Crossrope, HoneyBug, the Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes, Dr. Squatch, BakBlade, T.S. Restaurants, Ruggable, and The San Diego Symphony.

He is also the author of the book People Love Turkey Sandwiches, a sought-after speaker, documentary filmmaker, and 2-time Emmy-winning storyteller and creative director. His work has been featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine.

In this episode, Jacques shares where his love of creating videos came from, Raindrop’s breakthroughs and triumphs, hiring the best people for the company, and Raindrop’s plans for the next 5 years.

This Cast Covers:

Fun-loving 12-year-old Jacques who enjoyed storytelling and problem solving and pulling pranks during college (03:50)
Getting a job at NBC before he discovered his love for filming videos (06:58)
Charging 20 bucks an hour for his first few clients (08:16)
Jacques reflects back on Raindrop’s 10-year journey (10:52)
Helping the San Diego Symphony double their ticket sales within a year (11:46)
Being introduced to Jack Haldrup and working on the Dr. Squatch Soap ad campaigns (13:02)
Their experience of hiring a salesperson or sales team for the first time (16:06)
Why hiring the right people and hiring a Director of People and Culture was one of their best hiring decisions (18:38)
Why focusing on retention is almost more important than acquisition (21:41)
Generating many inbound leads from the success of the Dr. Squatch ad campaign (23:31)
Jacques talks about how Raindrop manages qualifying leads and how they plan to get in front of their ideal clients (27:32)
Strategies in mind for outbound marketing and reaching out to their dream brands(32:10)
Where Jacques sees Raindrop headed 5 years down the road (34:23)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Jacques Spitzer on LinkedIn
Raindrop Agency

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Brantley Payne is Partner and Executive Creative Director at Sacramento creative agency, un/common. He started his career as a graphic designer in the early 90s and was hired as a junior art director of the former Glass Agency under the mentorship of Bob Matsumoto. In 2010, the owner passed away due to a terminal illness, which left Amber Williams (Head of Accounts), Siobhann Mansour (Head of Media) and Brantley (Head of Creative), to forge an unlikely partnership and lead the operations of the agency.

The three of them bought out the agency and renamed it un/common in March 2016, almost exactly 16 years after Brantley was employed as a junior art director. They changed the name based on the peculiar path that brought them together and on the advertising work they had produced over the years.

During this episode, we discuss the unusual path Brantley took to become an agency owner, how he uses storytelling to wow potential clients and deliver work that is full of excitement, He also explains why he encourages his team to dream big and deliver big results, which has led them to grow into the successful $11 million agency they are today.

This Cast Covers:

Brantley’s childhood as a creative and artistic 12-year-old which led to him having amazing presentation skills (03:50)
His unique story from starting as Junior Art Director in 1997 to becoming Partner and Creative Director of un/common in 2015 (05:59)
Making adjustment when he and his partners took over the agency (08:10)
Drastic changes he and his partners did in terms of company culture and dealing with clients (09:33)
The process behind the agency name change from Glass Agency to un/common (12:12)
Projects they are working on and clients they serve currently and what they have become known for (12:21)
Finding ways for smaller clients to stand out through brand storytelling (15:14)
The not-so-secret secret to building an $11 million agency (17:13)
Why sometimes slow growth can also be good (17:30)
How they turned their agency’s greatest fear into their strength (19:06)
Creating experiences for clients that make them excited to work with you and refer business to you (21:33)
Balancing a culture that leads with emotion and dreaming while maintaining a common goal (24:26)
Why most agencies struggle to exist to create a successful business (27:23)
Brantley’s superpower as a leader in the workplace (32:30)
Areas for improvement and where un/common is focusing on in 2021 (35:02)
Why focusing primarily on growth and sales can sometimes hinder you (39:06)

Additional Resources:

Brantley Payne on Linkedin
Un/common
Un/common on Instagram
Un/common on Facebook

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Steve Wiideman is the CEO and President of Wiideman Consulting Group based in the Greater Los Angeles area, specializing in inbound marketing strategy for multi-location and franchise brands and provides innovative solutions for search engine optimization and paid search advertising.

In addition to providing digital marketing training to companies, Steve has worked for the following Fortune 500 companies and startups: Technicolor, Linksys, Public Storage, Disney Parks and Resorts, Belkin, Honda, Skechers, Applebee's, IHOP, and Dole, where he emphasizes campaign oversight and planning.

In 2006, he was awarded Congressional Recognition for his work helping small businesses and students in his field. He conducts in-person presentations and online videos on link building, search engine optimization, SEO standards, and local ranking factors. He has written numerous information products, such as SEO in a Day, The Four Layers of the SEO Model, and more recently seoroadmap.org (a breakdown of inbound marketing disciplines and strategies).

This podcast highlights what keeps Steve going all these years, how he got started in the digital marketing industry, how he carved out a name for himself as an authority, and what he considers the keys to the success of his digital consulting group.

This Cast Covers:

12-year-old Steve’s fascination with technology and computing led him to teach military troops how to use laptops (03:46)
Going back to school for a degree in e-business management and moonlighting as an internet marketer (05:06)
Steve’s first-ever freelance project and how much he charged (05:22)
Being recruited by Disney Parks and Resorts and becoming an SEM account manager (06:23)
Taking on the challenge of ranking for SEO expert (08:46)
Balancing his personality as an introvert once he became CEO (09:50)
Overcoming his apprehension of speaking to large audiences (10:23)
The importance of mindset as a founder of a company (12:15)
Understanding the weight of the founder’s role in sales (13:23)
Steve’s goal for Wiideman to become the “Sherpa of search marketing” (19:00)
The kind of content you should be creating if you want to become an expert in your industry (22:46)
Current plans of Wiideman Consulting for scaling, business development (25:37)
How to see massive growth in your agency (27:12)
Creating a culture of empowerment within your team (29:58)
What allows Steve to keep growing in his business and personal life (33:34)

Additional Resources:

Wiideman Consulting Group
Steve on Linkedin
Wiideman Consulting on Linkedin
Academy of Search (Use the code SEOSTEVE to get free access to courses)

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We’re changing things up around here! As you know, our goal through this podcast isn't just to help you become a growth-driven agency, but for you to really become the best agency you can possibly be. So in line with this, we’ve decided to rebrand the podcast with a new, more fitting name! Find out what this podcast will be called by listening to this quick announcement. We'll have awesome episodes coming soon, along with a new segment most requested by you.

We would love your thoughts on the new name! Let us know by leaving us a rating and review!

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Casey Meraz is the founder of Juris Digital, which offers full-service law firm marketing, including web design and development, search engine optimization, and content marketing. Over the years he has assisted hundreds of law firms in increasing their case volume in the most competitive markets. Research, testing, and years of experience have equipped Casey with an edge that enables the company to compete in the most challenging markets in the United States. He is a thought leader in the legal marketing industry, speaker at conferences such as SMX, Big Digital, and State of Search, and author of the book “Local Marketing for Personal Injury Lawyers.”

In this episode, Casey shares his first entrepreneurial experience as a teenager, how he got into learning SEO and digital marketing, the best hiring decisions he ever made for the agency, and how they went about their first acquisition in 2020. Casey also shares which areas he struggled with as an agency owner and what mistakes he made in the past. If you’re a young agency owner and you want to avoid running into those same pitfalls, then this episode is for you.

This Cast Covers:

Casey’s backstory as a serial entrepreneur starting his first company at 15 years old (01:26)
His current move from Denver to Ireland with his wife and kids (02:08)
Being interested in film and TV production as a young child then falling in love with starting businesses (03:56)
How he founded Juris Digital in 2011, formerly known as Ethical SEO Consulting (06:15)
Going from a generalist approach to niching down to SEO for law firms (07:32)
How Juris Digital is using SEO for their own marketing and business (09:10)
Why Casey believes in providing value and sharing information (10:56)
Their agency’s pricing strategy from when they first started vs. their pricing strategy now (12:51)
Which hiring decision made the most impact (14:44)
Achieving their first acquisition and how to integrate that company into your culture (18:33)
Casey removing himself from sales and how he achieved that (20:58)
The mistakes most agency owners do that keep them from growing (24:17)
Utilizing acquisition strategies for growth (27:53)
Current outbound strategies and channels Juris Digital plans to explore (31:35)
A tool that could help with your cold calling strategy (34:30)
Where Juris Digital is headed in 5 years (37:21)

Additional Resources:

Casey Meraz on Twitter
Juris Digital

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My guest today is McCain Kennedy, founder and owner of Set Fire Creative, a digital marketing agency based in Orem, Utah. Set Fire Creative works with small to midsize businesses and specializes in marketing funnels including social media management, paid social advertising, remarketing ads, landing page creation, and conversion rate optimization.

In this podcast, McCain shares what it means to grow responsibly, how to keep your small to mid-sized business clients happy, and why retention is key to growing an agency. Listen until the end for some mixed martial arts discussion and what MMA can teach you about being a successful agency owner or founder.

This Cast Covers:

Developing a passion for marketing since high school and working in a marketing agency straight out of college (01:11)
Working with small to midsize business vs. enterprise agency clients (02:25)
His journey from being a freelancer turned agency founder of Set Fire Creative (07:13)
What his first few projects were like and offering services “for experience” (07:38)
How the agency views growth and what growing responsibly looked like for their agency (14:50)
Growing from having 1 full-time employee to now having a 15-employee strong team in just a span of 2 years (18:45)
What Set Fire Creative is looking to invest for the future (19:54)
The importance of qualifying your clients (22:05)
Plans of exploring a traditional marketing medium that will set them apart in Utah Valley (25:57)
How Set Fire Creative has gone about sales and what their sales process is like (29:13)
Working with partnerships and adopting an abundance mindset (29:39)
Areas of the agency business that might still need some work and how McCain plans to address them and move forward (33:26)
The importance of setting proper expectations and validating small businesses (38:56)
Why retention is key to growing your agency successfully and responsibly (44:48)

Additional Resources:

Set Fire Creative
Set Fire Creative’s Instagram
Set Fire Creative on Linkedin
McCain on Linkedin
Motivosity

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Will Perry is the CEO and CMO of Orlando-based Reason Agency, a direct response ad agency focusing on apparel brands, health and wellness, and healthy food spaces within e-commerce. They help scale up growth-stage ready brands drive significant revenue through paid social media ads such as Facebook and Google ads. Reason specializes in highly optimized split testing & media buying strategies that make acquiring customers more profitable.

In this episode, Will reminisces of his ice hockey days, his dream of being an ESPN journalist as a 12-year-old kid, and swiftly shifting to sales and marketing after his college internship at a golf academy. He then shares how his past failures and mistakes in starting an agency taught him valuable lessons on sales, marketing, and what it takes to successfully build, scale and grow Reason into what it is now.

This Cast Covers:

Growing up in New Jersey playing ice hockey and being a powerhouse on the rink (04:01)
From ditching his dream of becoming an ESPN journalist to taking up communications and digital marketing in college (06:40)
How his internship at a golf academy got him hired as the Marketing Manager at 22 and promoted to Director of Sales and Marketing at 24 (07:49)
Learning about the ins and outs of the sales process and high-ticket sales before making the jump to freelancing and starting an agency in 2015 (12:21)
What their first projects looked like in the early years of their agency (13:26)
Niching down in terms of service and industry to build the most profitable model possible (18:14)
Three stages of building out a sales department (21:39)
Setting up SOPs and sales playbooks and what good it’s done for the agency (23:16)
Where most agencies struggle and how to fix it (27:46)
What Will had to learn from Reason’s weak points (33:19)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Reason
Will on Linkedin

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My guest today is Robb Fahrion, co-founder and partner of Flying V Group, a digital marketing and strategy agency based in Orange County, California. Flying V takes a comprehensive approach to creating digital marketing strategies for their clients by providing services such as website design/redesign, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, or social media marketing.

After receiving his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Chapman University where he graduated with Summa Cum Laude honors, he worked in numerous marketing positions in several companies like KeenVision Financial and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Before co-founding Flying V Group with his brother, Tyler, he became Director of Marketing at Security First Corp, and has formed relationships with clients like IBM, Unisys, Northrup Grumman, Microsoft, and Sengex. He also serves as the Chief Marketing Officer for the California Waste and Recycling Association and is an active member of Seed Consulting Group.

In this episode we talk about Robb’s obsession with sports ever since he was a 12-year-old kid, how they survived and thrived bootstrapping their agency, what they did to ensure the long-term success of the agency in terms of lead generation, client acquisition and sales processes.

This Cast Covers:

Working summers in college for a minor league baseball team (06:36)
His first introduction to marketing and advertising at a tech company (8:42)
Leaving marketing to do financial consulting on a B2B level (09:40)
A call from one of Robb’s mentors who turned into a paying client (11:02)
Offering digital marketing strategy for professional services (12:41)
Leaving the corporate world to start Flying V Group with his brother Tyler (13:40)
Bootstrapping the agency during the first few years (16:12)
What they did to grow the business outside of their sweat equity (17:15)
Investing in long-term success of the agency and looking at growth holistically (18:10)
Robb’s struggles in the early days of the agency getting sales and closing deals (22:20)
Creating a foot in the door offer (30:39)
Treating the agency as your own client (38:20)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Flying V Group
Robb on LinkedIn

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In this episode, I interview Corey Morris, Chief Strategy Officer of Voltage, a digital marketing agency based in Kansas City. Voltage partners with clients to create award-winning strategies focused on design, development, search engine optimization, paid search, and marketing campaigns. For the past 15 years, Corey Morris has worked in strategic and leadership roles in the digital marketing industry. In 2015, he led the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) Cities initiative in Kansas City upon founding the KC Search Marketing Conference and currently serves as VP for the worldwide SEMPO Cities Program.

Corey also shares his knowledge about the search industry as VIP contributor to Search Engine Journal and speaker at local and national events on SEO and digital marketing topics. He also formerly served as co-host of a monthly tech radio show called Tech Circuit.

Join us today as Corey gives his insights on what it's like building a digital marketing team from scratch, finding the right people and cultural fit to scale an agency, and tips on how to grow your small agency past the 7-figure revenue mark and beyond.

This Cast Covers:

How Corey joined Voltage and started as as a digital marketing team of one to leading overall strategy at Voltage (1:32)
Playing every sport he could in his childhood and wanting to break the mold of being a doctor in his family (3:10)
What made Corey realize he wanted to pursue a career in marketing (04:23)
The power of networking and how it led him to his first project manager role in a digital marketing agency (05:42)
What led him to join Voltage in 2013 (6:35)
From being known as a full-service agency to narrowing their focus on digital marketing strategy specializing in SEO and search marketing (06:58)
How niching down helped Voltage establish their digital marketing presence and grow their team internally (07:12)
Empowering people to embrace their subject matter expertise (10:38)
What makes Voltage successful in terms of higher sales, higher employee and client retention (15:37)
Effective and reliable growth tactics for acquiring and retaining clients (17:40)
Corey’s biggest contribution to the agency a.k.a. Corey’s superpower (21:00)
Where Voltage is headed in 2021 and what they are trying to improve in terms of growing and scaling the agency (24:20)
What agency owners must focus on that will make the most impact on growth and profit margins (26:41)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Voltage
Corey Morris at Search Engine Journal

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In this episode, I interview Mike Belasco, the President and CEO of Inflow, a Denver-based eCommerce marketing agency. Inflow provides cutting-edge eCommerce inbound marketing and search engine optimization services including conversion optimization and paid search marketing. Mike has been an entrepreneur and digital marketer since 2003, when he launched a brand in the online gambling industry. He honed his skills in the early 1990s during the dot-com boom and has led Inflow to five Denver’s Fastest-Growing Private Company awards and three Inc. 5000 awards. In 2009, he also founded ConversionIQ, which was acquired by Inflow in 2014.

From also working as a web developer, he developed deep expertise in search engine optimization (SEO) and over his marketing and SEO career, he’s worked with brands such as Amazon, Overstock.com, Dish Network, and many other mid-sized companies and small businesses. Mike has previously spoken at national and international industry events and conferences such as Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Online Marketing Summit (OMS), Search Engine Strategies Expo (SES), and Business Marketing Association Events (BMA). He’s also a guest lecturer on digital marketing at CU Boulder and the University of Denver.

He joined us on the show to share his digital marketing expertise and talk about his aspirations as a 12 year old kid, venturing into business at a young age, starting an affiliate site for online poker and online sports betting in his early 20s and how it all led him into the lucrative eCommerce industry that he’s in now.

This Cast Covers:

From doing web development for different corporate entities to running Inflow for the last 14 years (01:14)
How growing up around computers and tons of tech inspired him to become who he is now (04:00)
Learning about SEO and digital marketing from running an affiliate site for online poker and online sports betting that he started his early 20s (05:37)
Where the name “Mike the Internet guy” came from (07:37)
The huge challenges that came with a white label business model (09:23)
Starting ConversionIQ to help clients with conversion optimization (11:25)
Niching down on the eCommerce space and how lucrative it’s been for them (15:02)
Building their values around the Inflow Harmonic Triangle to consistently grow their business (21:16)
Continuous improvement: How they are consistently trying to figure out how to make things better for their team members (26:36)
Growing the business from their own marketing, content marketing and referrals, and the challenges they have with outbound marketing (29:59)
Looking more into target marketing and the success they’ve had with their profit share model (36:13)
How employing the agile framework helped them get more effective on the operational side of things (40:56)

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Inflow
Mike on Linkedin
Mike on Twitter

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Will Haire is the successful co-founder and CEO of BellaVix which is a full-service Amazon Agency that helps brands grow their business by offering different levels of support depending on the client’s needs.

Coming from a family of veterans, Will enlisted in 2002 where he acquired a Marine Electricians license through the United States Military Apprentice Program.

With time, he realized that he had a passion for marketing and left a comfortable 6-figure job in the power industry to go work for $14 an hour at a startup digital agency.

For 10 years, he honed his skills in digital strategy, digital marketing, marketing consulting, advertising and marketing strategies on Amazon.

In 2018, Will and his wife, who is also a digital marketer, had a son. This prompted them to have a conversation about starting a business. Growing up, his father was an entrepreneur running an elevator business and he always knew that at one point, he would also want to run his own business.

In March, 2018, Will quit his job, and together with his wife, co-founded BellaVix. Within no time, after Will updated his LinkedIn profile, people that he had worked with before reached out to him. In less than 60 days after starting his company, he had 8 clients in his portfolio.

Currently the company has 10 full-time employees, managing 20 Amazon accounts and generating $2M in revenue a month on the platform.

We covered a lot of ground in this episode, discussing topics such as:

05:16 How to successfully work with family members
07:15 The challenge of hiring and recruiting as an Amazon service agency.
07:38 Hiring a global team and how it affects company culture
11:17 Why they chose an Amazon marketing service as their e-commerce niche
14:11 Growing an Amazon Agency
15:07 How to price your agency services
17:56 Vetting potential clients
22:17 Using inbound marketing strategies to get leads and the platforms that will get you the most leads
26:09 Screening potential clients and qualifying them
28:11 Using a proforma to onboard clients
37:19 The vision for BellaVix
39:26 Round of Random – six random questions

Additional Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
BellaVix
Will on LinkedIn
Will on Twitter

Register for the Sales Driven Agency Mastermind

The Sales Driven Agency will launch its first ever agency sales mastermind in April 2020. It is a mastermind specifically and only for agency owners to help them fire themselves from selling and hire the right sales people.

The mastermind will open in April, and the pricing is $1000 for the first 20 subscribers before it goes up to $1500.

To register, visit salesdrivenagency.com and in the top right, click on book a call to talk to a member of the team.

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My guest today on the show is Jon Franko, co-founder and partner at Gorilla 76, an industrial marketing agency based in St. Louis, Missouri.

From being a 6th grader who wanted to play professional basketball, Jon went on to attend the Journalism School of the University of Missouri. There he discovered he was a natural writer, leaning towards traditional newspaper-style writing. By his second year, his curriculum included an advertising program which introduced him to copywriting and gave him his first glimpse at the world he would eventually thrive in.

After school, he went to work as a copywriter for a local agency but was doing spec ads on the side for fun. His aunt who was working for an advertising business told him he should be getting paid for the good work he was doing. In 2006, he started freelancing and went full-time in 2008.

We talk about:

His backstory as a 12-year old Chicago Bulls fan to establishing Gorilla 76 with his business partner in 2006 (02:30)
Getting into the industrial sector by accident (09:10)
The constant evolution of Gorilla 76 (12:35)
Being diagnosed with MS on January 15, 2016 (16:50)
How his diagnosis has impacted his work at the agency, with focus on empathy (20:20)
Getting into marathons and what he loves about running (22:57)
The core values of Gorilla 76 and how these have contributed to the success of the agency (31:08)
What goal-setting and company growth looks like for him (35:24)
His partner’s podcast titled The Manufacturing Executive Podcast that talks about growth strategies for manufacturing leaders and repurposing content (40:21)
How sales are done inside the agency (41:14)
The weaknesses and areas for improvement of Gorilla 76 (44:52)

Resources:

The Sales Driven Agency
Gorilla 76
Jon on Instagram
Jon on LinkedIn

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Congratulations for making your way here to the Growth Driven Agency podcast!

Right off the bat I am going to tell you -- this is not your typical show. I won’t be talking about the old stuff that no longer works. With each episode, I am going to give you valuable and relevant information on the digital agency space that will help you not only scale your business, but become the owner of an agency you’ve always dreamed of running.

I’m going to give everything to you straight without any fluff, and some may find that abrasive, but I am here to help you and I can only do that by being real, open, and transparent. That being said, I will also be bringing in guests who are great at what they do, so they deserve to be heard.

If you’re looking for blunt, functional and practical advice on agency growth, you’ve come to the right place. My name is Joey Gilkey of the Growth Driven Agency. Welcome to my world.

Best Damn Agency Podcast: Recent Episodes

Joey Gilkey