Agencies Drinking Beer: Recent Episodes
Kyle and Kevin from Proposify
Former agency owners and founders of Proposify, Kyle and Kevin sit down every Friday to interview a digital agency owner from around the world, learn practical lessons, and get a buzz on.
We're done with Agencies Drinking Beer, but we have a whole new show called The Proposify Biz Chat that's shorter, and more focused on actionable takeaways for business owners and entrepreneurs.
Thanks for listening to ADB and keep that subscription, we're going to be switching over to a new format in a week or so. You'll see it come up as The Proposify Biz Chat with Kyle Racki.
See you soon!
This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kevin and Kyle interview Sue B. Zimmerman, also known as #theinstagramexpert about how agencies can get real results from Instagram, promoting themselves and their clients.
This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, Kevin and Kyle interview Benjamin Nathan, founder of Footage Films based in New York, about creating a socially conscious film production company.
Many people wonder, “Does my business need outbound AND inbound sales?” As an established sales professional who has also worked with businesses like Kissmetrics and UserTesting before heading up BD at Leap Financial, Chris is a strong believer in the power of outbound sales. In fact, he believes EVERY business should be doing outbound sales, even if you have a good inbound sales process. “If you have a price point that’s high enough to justify a sales team, and that team isn’t spending 6 hours of their day doing demos, then they should be doing outbound - cold calling, cold emailing,” says Chris.
Chris also shares his daily process for generating, qualifying, and following up with leads, and the tools he uses to make it all easier, including LinkedIn, Datanyze, and Yesware.
As a technical marketing agency, Mike and his team at UpBuild combine the top of skills of both a marketer and a developer to optimize the %$#^ out of their clients’ sites and get real growth results.
One of the really interesting practices at UpBuild is how every potential sales lead is validated by the entire team before deciding to take them on as an agency client. Mike and his team evaluate each lead based on three criteria, with each team member voting individually on a scale of 1-5:
Alignment: Do we think we can adhere to our core values while working with this client?
Effectiveness: Can we make a difference for this client?
Interest: Are we personally interested in working with this business?
If the vote averages at 3 or under, they pass the lead on to another company. If it’s over 3, they take it on as a client. If the average vote ends up being 4.5 or higher, UpBuild not only takes the client on, they offer a 15% discount.
For Mike, it’s in his best interest as a business owner to ensure his employees are happy and motivated to do their best work. And that only happens if you’re working with clients you believe in.
Check out UpBuild’s blog to learn more about their expertise in technical marketing.
You can also catch up with Mike as a guest blogger on moz.com
Kevin talks about how Industrial Strength got into this particular niche, and how they apply this specialization strategy to help their own clients differentiate within their markets. “Being a differentiated agency is a clear competitive advantage and then for a lot of our clients we help them find their own competitive advantage. “
On top of the challenges that industrial companies share with most businesses — things like driving leads, raising awareness, sales and marketing misalignment, brand strategy — this sector overall is facing a critical skills/labour gap. So Industrial Strength has also developed programs to help raise awareness among young graduates about the potential in manufacturing careers.
Kevin also shares how his agency has developed their own “agency operating system”, based on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and insights from the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business . Implementing this system has changed the way Industrial Strength operates, helping get their agency on track and stay focused.
Will shares how he made the switch from playwright to animator and grew IdeaRocket to include clients like Verizon, the New York Knicks, Showtime, and Bank of America. Will also talks about his frustration with businesses who are completely inflexible with what they consider to be “on-brand”, to the detriment of growth. As Will says, “If brand consistency is flattening your brand expression, it’s not serving to differentiate your product. Let’s get back to what it’s all about - product differentiation. Let’s trace it to business objectives rather than thinking of brand as an end in itself.”
Bonus: tune to hear Kevin’s impression of Neil Young.
Jake and Jackson believe video is the quickest and easiest way for people to get to know your company - the trick is getting it in front of the right audience. At Video Power, they help businesses craft their message, create a video, and leverage YouTube to build brand and track leads. They ask their clients, “If you had your own Super Bowl commercial, what would you say?”, because according to Video Power, there are 40 Super Bowls happening every day on YouTube. So you can get more than Super Bowl exposure without paying Super Bowl prices. The sad part? Not enough businesses are leveraging the power of YouTube advertising. “For every $1 we spend on YouTube ads, we can get back $3-$4 in sales”, says Jake.
Check out their great blog post called How to Create YouTube Ads That Don’t Suck
The name Chet Holmes is familiar to many people in the sales world. He wrote the New York Times bestselling book The Ultimate Sales Machine in 2008, sharing his successful formula for repeatable sales, and it remains among Amazon’s bestsellers to this day. When Chet passed away in 2012, his daughter Amanda was 24, living in Asia, studying under a spiritual mentor, and had a successful career as a musician. Taking over her father’s company was the last thing on her mind.
But Amanda soon discovered that she had something to offer to carry forward her father’s legacy and set about modernizing the company, doubling their client base two years in a row. Four years later, Chet Holmes International is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary, having helped over 200,000 business worldwide improve their sales and marketing.
Amanda also offers her advice on the the one skill set every business owner needs to success: pigheaded discipline and determination. If you want to learn more about the Chet Holmes method, they offer Chapter 4 of The Ultimate Sales Machine for free.
Opening its doors in January, 2014, Hawke is definitely an agency on fire. It was named the fastest growing agency in Los Angeles, as well as the happiest place to work, plus its co-founder, Erik Huberman, was named one of the top 30 under 30 by Forbes. Tony talks about how hiring for culture has helped them quickly and successfully scale Hawke to earn a valued place at the marketing table of companies like Verizon Wireless, Eddie Bauer, and Red Bull. Tony explains that fulfilling the role of CMO is about more than just understanding marketing, it’s about understanding brand, position in the marketplace, business objectives, customer lifetime value, how to bring people into the sales funnel, and how all of that is that impacted by other parts of the business. “We try to look at everything holistically and then impact that with the right digital tools,” says Tony.
This week on Agencies Drinking Beer, we continue with part two of our interview with Paul Boag of Boagworld. In this episode Paul reflects on the challenges he faced as co-founder of a digital agency (which are universal to almost all agencies), why he decided to leave that agency to pursue the consultant’s life, and how he learned the importance of defining your own version of success.
In part 1 of this interview, Paul talks about what it was like to start a web design podcast back when the only podcasts on iTunes were about knitting, and how the timing of Boagworld opened doors for him to expand his career and influence. Paul’s a big believer that success has far more to with with the ability recognize and grasp opportunity than it has to do with just talent. And his advice for how to approach those influencers, the people you admire and respect? Just sent them an email and thank them for what they’re doing. As Paul says, “Everyone is sharing the same struggles.” Tune in next week for part 2!