Mining Your CRM for Gold to Maximize Agency Growth with Wendy Lieber | Ep #726

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What would you do to keep growing your agency if new leads dried up? How would you guarantee increased business? How would you ensure continued success? Our guest today emphasizes the importance of revisiting your CRM as a vital tool for driving business expansion. After years of collecting contacts for her database, a new CRM system revealed previously overlooked opportunities. Rather than seeking new leads, she realized the value of delving deeper into her existing contacts. Learn how this agency owner transitioned into building a scalable subscription-based agency model.

Wendy Lieber is the CEO and co-founder of ContentBacon, a leading content subscription service that provides resources for clients to tell their unique stories and establish themselves as experts in their field with custom content. Wendy shares her journey from running a traditional boutique agency to founding a successful content-as-a-service company. She reflects on her entrepreneurial experiences and discusses how agency owners could use personalized human connection to maximize their CRM potential.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Mining your CRM for overlooked gold.

• Maximizing your CRM’s potential without new leads.

• Effective agency leadership strategies to help your agency grow. 

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Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Choosing Content Over Traditional Agency Growth

ContentBacon is Wendy’s second company venture. Her initial venture was with a more traditional boutique agency, where she worked with private equity groups and created customized solutions.

By the time she grew that agency to $500,000, Wendy joined a program called Entrepreneur Accelerator designed to grow companies over $1 million. Even though she highly enjoyed the work for a while, she realized she wasn’t very interested in continuing to scale that particular model past what they’d already reached.

Around that time, she had been testing a content subscription-based model with her clients and had seen a great response. With the rise of social media and having a social presence becoming more and more important, Wendy saw the value of a service like this for struggling businesses. This was the model Wendy wanted to grow.

Mining for Gold in Your Agency’s CRM

Through doing their own inbound and outbound marketing, Wendy’s agency has been collecting a lot of contacts to their database over the years. Once they moved to a more sophisticated CRM with HubSpot, they started to analyze and utilize the data they had and found they didn’t need anything new, rather they needed to go much deeper into what they had.

There’s a tendency in the marketing industry to always chase after the next new thing or shiny object. Wendy cautions against falling into the trap of constantly seeking out new technologies or strategies without fully utilizing the data and resources already available. Instead, she advocates for going back to the basics and focusing on simple, effective strategies that can drive growth and success.

Try to identify the low-hanging fruit you can leverage to your benefit and understand and segment those contacts. This way, you can identify high-value leads, personalize your marketing efforts, and drive better results rather than constantly chasing after new trends.

Maximizing Your CRM Potential Without New Leads

If you feel like you’ve invested a lot in a good CRM system but are not seeing the benefits of your investment, take a look at the work being done. Is there a CRM champion on the team? Is there at least one person who owns it and develops a strategy around it? A CRM is a tool, but you should really build a strategy around it.

As a helpful exercise, Wendy suggests thinking about what you would do if you couldn’t get a new lead for 90 days. How would you generate new business with what you have? Ask yourself this question and use it to challenge yourself to find the gold that’s probably in your CRM.

Check your contact list and reach out to old clients and prospects. You may uncover valuable opportunities that have been overlooked. To this point, Wendy suggests trying to establish a real conversation instead of just using automation. This way, you’ll be able to build stronger relationships, foster trust with your audience, and ultimately achieve greater success in your marketing efforts.

From Putting Out Fires to Effective Agency Leadership

After running two businesses, Wendy continues to be surprised by the challenge of keeping both customers and employees satisfied. Balancing the needs of her clientele and her team while simultaneously focusing on business growth is an ongoing endeavor. Despite her extensive experience, just when she believes everything is on track something will happen that throws her back to working on the business instead of in the business.

Ultimately, a big part of business management revolves around continuous problem-solving. Those naturally inclined to navigate these challenges are probably better suited for the role. However, the best way to stop constantly putting out fires is to train and empower your team to make decisions based on the overall goals and directions set for the agency.

A clear leadership that sets the course for the business will lead to a team that is better equipped to make decisions and take initiative without constantly seeking approval from the leader, leading to a more efficient and effective work environment.

At the end of the day, most agency owners started a business not only looking to have more money but also to gain more time and freedom. Once you start to find the right people to take over the tasks you hate and form a team that works well together, things will flow naturally. This is why Wendy doesn’t believe in coaching and developing a person to fit in with the culture. If things are right, she says, it’ll flow. Sometimes if it feels too hard for someone to adapt to the team, you’re just trying to put the wrong person in the wrong seat.

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