Build a Better Agency Podcast

Drew McLellan is the CEO at Agency Management Institute. For the past 23+ years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year gives him a unique perspective on running an agency today. AMI works with agency owners by: Leading agency owner peer groups Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams Offering AE bootcamps Conducting individual agency owner coaching Doing on-site consulting Offering online courses in agency new business and account service Because he works with those 250+ agencies every year — he has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Agency ownership is challenging – be sure you maximize the benefits as well Get real about your compensation – chart out all of the ways the agency compensates you with pre-tax dollars for things you’d spend post tax dollars on otherwise All of our compensation isn’t monetary. You also have other amazing benefits and perks that come with owning the joint Putting your agency at the core of your retirement plan -- even if it doesn’t sell (most don’t) Building your wealth outside your agency while you still own it The danger of leaving too much of your own money inside the business Ways to invest your agency profits Ways to contact Drew McLellan: Email: drew@agencymanagementinstitute.com We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Based in Dallas, Stephanie Chung and Associates offer sales training, executive coaching, and small business mentorship services nationwide. Among her products is the High Ticket Selling Made Simple course, designed to help small business owners sell more and make more. As a former sales executive in the aviation and private jet industry, Stephanie has mastered the art of high ticket selling and has mentored, coached, and developed some of the highest paid, most elite, sales professionals in the country. Serving business leaders, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals, Stephanie Chung uses her proven executive coaching and sales training expertise to drive your top line sales. Chung is an executive coach, trainer and advisor backed by more than 25 years of team management, business development, and sales leadership experience. Chung is also a public speaker, a contributor on ABC, CBS, NBC and author of “Profit Like a Girl: A Woman's Guide to Kicking Butt in Sales and Leadership” and “Embrace the Suck: How to Grow and Succeed in Business.”   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Doing sales right by caring about who you’re selling to and solving their problem How to identify your ideal prospects and actually get in front of them The importance of adding value beyond what you broadcast on your website How letting people talk about themselves increases the chance of a sale Why the agency owner is the best person to make the sale What to do to get comfortable with sales The five stages of sales Making the close extremely easy by setting it up from the beginning The importance of not being vague about when you’re going to follow up The preemptive strike: overcoming common objections from buyers by bringing them up yourself first Using silence as a tool when selling Why you can’t afford to spend time chasing people around How to get people to want to be your client Ways to contact Betsy McLarney: Website: www.stephaniechung.com Book (free download): "Profit Like A Girl: A Woman's Guide to Kicking Butt in Sales and Leadership" We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

With 19 years of Outdoor Advertising experience, Betsy McLarney has planned, managed, and executed many fully integrated Out of Home (OOH) advertising campaigns throughout North America and worldwide. Today she leads a team of experienced, dedicated strategists who help clients maximize the potential of Outdoor advertising (OOH), by complementing a robust integrated media plan. EMC Outdoor works seamlessly with their agency clients or direct with a brand’s media department to deliver pitch-perfect programs and outstanding results each and every time. Complete client satisfaction is their ultimate goal.     What you’ll learn about in this episode: Out of Home (OOH) media: what is it? How digital outdoor advertising really makes the experience come alive for consumers Using OOH to hit consumers with messages at multiple touch points throughout their day It’s not just for B2C: how B2B can utilize OOH to enhance their campaigns Using street teams effectively to get your message out to live people Why OOH isn’t just for national brands and can be used effectively for even local campaigns Matching the budget to where the OOH campaign can be the most effective Can OOH still be the main means of advertising? How OOH makes digital advertising more effective Creating buzz by finding creative ways to place ads outdoors Why outdoors isn’t the place to tell a big story Ways to contact Betsy McLarney: Website: www.emcoutdoor.com Email: bjm@emcoutdoor.com Resources: Outdoor Advertising Association of America: oaaa.org We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Ryan O'Donnell is a midwest kid who moved to NYC after college and landed a job on Wall Street making 500 calls a day. He hated it, followed a passion for tech, and ended up joining a company early that eventually sold to Yahoo for $850M. He grew a business unit from $0 - $20M and left Yahoo to startup. Fast forward 3 meandering years trying to generate sales and Ryan decided to build a product to speed up the time to revenue for any business selling a product or service B2B called Sellhack. He’s successfully running this company today, helping his clients get in front of the right prospects faster and with a better close rate than they’d been doing on their own. He’s a father of 3, husband, and hobbyist prepper, and he’s in relentless pursuit of scratch golf.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why sales is all about automation and efficiency Using data to take the guesswork out of the prospect search Crafting compelling emails to prospects based on what you know about their competition (that you already work with) Figuring out how many prospects you need to capture every week at the top of your sales funnel in order to get the number of new leads you need at the bottom of the funnel SellHack’s algorithm for verifying the email address of a person who you might just know their name and company Replyify: a tool specifically devised for sending out cold email campaigns and building a sales process to contact prospects in other ways Strategies for crafting an email that works for cold selling B2B products and services How and when to ask to schedule time with a prospect Tiering your offerings and basing communication with prospects based on the tier Using the ideas from this podcast not only inside your agency, but also with your clients Ways to contact Ryan O'Donnell: Email: ryan@sellhack.com (email Ryan for the special offers) We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Sam Mallikarjunan is a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot and former Head of Growth at HubSpot Labs, the somewhat-secret experimental arm of the world’s #1 Sales & Marketing platform. Sam teaches Advanced Digital Marketing at the Harvard Division of Continuing Education, and he is also the co-author of the book How To Sell Better Than Amazon (which, thanks to the publisher, is ironically available for purchase on Amazon).   What you’ll learn about in this episode: The way the internet has changed selling so that there’s almost too much information How salespeople can help consumers sift through the breadth of information out there Structuring sales calls so they’re all about asking the buyers questions about their business The power of inbound: competition where no one else is competing Learning to say no to bad revenue Why you need to build buyer personas -- both for your ideal customers and customers that you don’t want to do business with because they’re going to cost you money Why clients need agencies to teach them what to do -- not how to do it Getting involved with your client’s complete business -- including the sales side of their business How to get your clients to treat your agency like a partner instead of a vendor Ways to contact Sam Mallikarjunan: Website: www.mallikarjunan.com Twitter: @Mallikarjunan Website: thinkgrowth.org We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Drew McLellan is the CEO at Agency Management Institute. For the past 23+ years, he has also owned and operated his own agency. Drew’s unique vantage point as being both an active agency owner and working with 250+ small- to mid-size agencies throughout the year gives him a unique perspective on running an agency today. AMI works with agency owners by: Leading agency owner peer groups Offering workshops for owners and their leadership teams Offering AE bootcamps Conducting individual agency owner coaching Doing on-site consulting Offering online courses in agency new business and account service Because he works with those 250+ agencies every year — he has the unique opportunity to see the patterns and the habits (both good and bad) that happen over and over again. He has also written two books and been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fortune Small Business. The Wall Street Journal called his blog “One of 10 blogs every entrepreneur should read.”   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why all agencies weren’t made to grow to the same size (and why that’s okay) Why agency owners have to work extremely hard when they’re at 0-5 employees and why all the employees in an agency that size have to wear multiple hats The bench strength problem for agencies with 5-12 employees and why there might only be one employee with a certain skill and no one to back them up Why the systems in processes must change for an agency once it hits 12 employees The change around 15 employees that takes an agency from being a family to being a team The decision-making process: why decisions are made collectively before agencies reach 12 employees and why agency owners need to take more autonomy at times as the agency grows Why around 35 employees is a great size for agencies in terms of cash flow (and why a gorilla client can be very dangerous at this point) Bigger, better clients and bigger, better employees: why 35-65 employees is the point where agencies “level up” Why bigger doesn’t equal more profitable for agencies anymore Ways to contact Drew McLellan: Email: drew@agencymanagementinstitute.com We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Joe Pulizzi is the founder of Content Marketing Institute which is now a UBM company. It is the leading education and training organization for content marketing, which includes the largest in-person content marketing event in the world, Content Marketing World. Joe is the winner of the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Content Council. Joe’s fifth book “Killing Marketing” was just released. His third book, “Epic Content Marketing” was named one of “Five Must-Read Business Books of 2013” by Fortune Magazine.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: The evolution of content marketing Focusing on your core verticals to help clients out with some part of the process that they’re terrible at How agencies can help clients build an audience of people that knows, likes, and trusts them and how that has a large impact over time Why elevating someone to the status of an expert with content marketing is a long-term process Focusing on clients that already value and have a budget for content marketing How delivering value to prospects on a long-term basis will all you to do business with them without going through an RFP How getting your audience to know, like, and trust you with content marketing will allow you to sell easily Some of the many different ways to monetize your customer list Changing the defined idea of marketing to match consumer behavior Why you can’t be everything to everybody and need to focus on a niche Why your sliver of opportunity to get started in on a niche is right now Ways to contact Joe Pulizzi: Twitter: @joepulizzi Website: www.joepulizzi.com We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Steve Boehler is a founding partner at Mercer Island Group - a strategic management and marketing consultancy. The company has three key practice areas: strategic business consulting, organization effectiveness, and client-agency relationships. They help companies and executives succeed. One of the ways they do that is by helping them better position themselves and sell more effectively by better bonding with prospects around the prospects' needs. They work with agencies of all sizes and types as well as consult to major clients in the US and across the globe like Microsoft, Ulta Beauty, PetSmart, Starbucks and many other fine firms. Steve started his career at Procter & Gamble - in his decade there he was the second youngest brand manager in that venerable company's history, turned around the Pringle's business, led Jif Peanut Butter to market leadership, and turned around the Tide business.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why clients likely don’t know about your agency and why you have to make yourself findable The importance of consistency with content creation Making your pitch unique so that it stands out from other agencies (and why agencies struggle with this so much) Selling and pitching: why it’s all about the prospect and their business and not about you The importance of doing your homework and actually bringing that homework into your presentation What to ask every client person in a pitch meeting to get them all involved Why you need to get prospects to agree to an agenda for a pitch meeting How getting prospects to define a problem helps to get them to buy into your solution Why you need to limit how you introduce your agency in a pitch to five slides (and what should be on those slides) What to leave with a prospect after the pitch Why you have to pitch to win Ways to contact Steve Boehler: Email: steveb@migroup.com Website: www.migroup.com Phone: (206) 236-0447 Resources: Layers of Sales episode We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Luke Summerfield wakes up each morning excited to discover, experience, and share moments of inspirations. He does this at HubSpot, advising startups, writing, and speaking. He founded the Growth-Driven Design movement which is transforming the world of web design. In the first twelve months, they grew from 0 -> 940 agencies in 50 countries offering GDD services to clients. Previous to HubSpot, Luke helped grow a digital marketing agency until it was acquired in 2014. Outside of work, he trains Mixed Martial Arts / Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and rough houses with his pug puppy, Mac.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Growth-driven design: what this “smarter way to do web design” is all about Why the platform you use for your website doesn’t matter with growth-driven design How growth-driven design was born out of the pain both agencies and clients felt around web development and why this system is so much better than previous ways of doing web dev Step 1: getting an empathetic understanding of your client’s audience’s world Step 2: building a “launch pad” website -- something that looks and performs better than what the client already has but is not the final product Step 3: continually improving websites How to sell and price growth-driven design to clients Why you should always sell at least 15 hours a month of growth-driven design and why you need at least a six month engagement from a client The stats that prove that growth-driven design gets more leads than traditional design Why growth-driven design still works great when you outsource the coding piece of web design All the assets Luke has on his website Ways to contact Luke Summerfield: Website: www.growthdrivendesign.com Report: www.growthdrivendesign.com/report Directory: www.growthdrivendesign.com/directory LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lukesummerfield We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Gerald Sexton is Director of Employee Enablement at Goodway Group. Gerald joined Goodway in early 2016 and brings significant experience in leveraging human resources to improve business performance and employee experience. Throughout his career, he has worked in the consulting, medical, aerospace and defense, and satellite-entertainment industries. His most recent position as Senior Human Resources (HR) Manager for DIRECTV’s premier customer-retention center in Boise, Idaho, allowed him to demonstrate just how much impact a strong HR partnership can have. Using an integrated approach with site leadership, Gerald helped the site reduce attrition by 7 percent, creating three million in cost savings. He holds a BS in psychology and an MA in organizational psychology. His fascination with solving complex problems in organizations led him to a career in HR with a strong emphasis on talent and organizational development. Gerald has a passion for cooking and enjoys traveling (and eating food from) all over the world. He lives in Boise with his wife, Robyn, and daughter, Rowan.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: The history of Goodway Group How Goodway succeeds with a virtual company with employees in 41 states The best tools for managing a virtual company What Gerald looks for in the hiring process to figure out if someone is suited for the hiring process or not Why Goodway looks at their team members results -- not their hours working How to build and maintain a strong company culture when running a virtual team Goodway’s twice-yearly all company meet-up The costs involved in a virtual team The benefits of working from home -- both on personal and business life Giving your team the freedom to plan out their day in a way that works best for them Why leaders of virtual teams need to be great at giving feedback and being transparent Why -- if you’re not comfortable going all virtual -- you should start small -- but not too small -- and build from there Benefits Goodway offers their employees that they couldn’t offer if they had a physical location How to get started trying going virtual We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!