Bob Sanders is a powerhouse in the marketing industry. He has previously worked with Agency Management Group, a firm that specialized in the operations, finance, and technology consultations for multinational agencies around the world. Since then, he has become the leader of Sanders Consulting Group, a leading consulting firm specializing in helping agencies implement best practices faster and more effectively.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How agencies can manipulate chemistry to their advantage
- The four quadrants people fall into and why this is an important thing to be able to assess when pitching new business
- Why you should never stop generating new business
- What agencies can do to get better at closing sales
- Strategies that work with big and small accounts
- Why spec creative isn’t something to be feared
- How to play on the misperception that agencies live exciting lives
- Why you need to alter your pitch based on who you’re pitching to
- How to be persistent to the point where potential clients are always thinking about you
- What your agency needs to do today to get on the right track in terms of new business
Ways to contact Bob Sanders:
- Website: www.sandersconsulting.com
- Twitter: @newbusinesshawk
- Email: bob@sandersconsulting.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!
Drew McLellan is the Top Dog at Agency Management Institute. For the past 21 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, give 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:
- How you are preventing your employees from becoming the employees you want them to be
- Why every employee needs weekly one-on-one meetings with their direct supervisor
- How to get your employees to run these meetings
- The form that needs to be filled out before one of these meetings takes place
- How these meetings can help you celebrate the wins you might not know about if you didn’t have these meetings
Documents:
Ways to contact Drew:
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!
Susan Baier began her career as a brand manager for companies like Dial and Conoco-Philips. She also worked agency side and within client companies in their research departments, honing her skills as a research professional.
Recognizing that primary research was often too expensive for small to mid-sized agencies, she launched Audience Audit, where she conducts quantitative attitudinal audience segmented research. She helps her agency clients develop marketing strategy for their clients based on customer insights. They find it much easier to develop messaging, strategic plans, and business development plans with real data that helps them understand how customers who look (demographically) the same behave in very different ways and what motives those choices and behaviors.
Over the past few years, AMI and Audience Audit have partnered together for studies on how business owners find agencies, their attitudes towards working with agencies, and more.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- How the research that Audience Audit does differs from a lot of the research that’s out there
- How your agency can leverage research inside your agency-client relationships
- The ways agencies can better sell the value of research to existing and prospective clients
- Why agencies can’t build their business around “shiny toys”
- The ways research has changed and why agencies shouldn’t be afraid to bring it to clients that they haven’t done research with in the past
- How bringing research to clients can give them a sense of relief and make it easier for your agency to retain their business
- A specific example of how this kind of targeted research helped a client in a big way
- The mistakes agencies make when trying bring research into their shop
- Why niche really matters when it comes to research
- Baby steps agencies can take to start incorporating research
Ways to contact Susan Baier:
- Website: www.audienceaudit.com
- Email: susan@audienceaudit.com
- Twitter: @susanbaier
Resources:
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!
Chuck Meyst has been in sales all his life, from his childhood bike route to CEO and founder of AgencyFinder.com, a matchmaking service for agencies.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why Chuck started AgencyFinder and how it works
- Why agency descriptions of themselves should be results-focused
- What both clients and agencies need to do well to find the right partner
- The big mistakes agencies make with their websites
- Sales: why do agencies not like this word?
- The traits Chuck sees in terrible employees
- Why processes are so important, especially when it comes to sales
- The characteristics in agencies that clients love to see
- How agencies win business through pure chemistry
- What AgencyFinder does to assess agencies and how to receive that perfect score of 100
- How AgencyFinder helps agencies team up with clients that are great matches
- Things agencies can do today to improve upon the topics discussed in this episode
Ways to Contact Chuck:
- Website: www.agencyfinder.com
- Email: chuck@agencyfinder.com
- Phone: (804)346-1812
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!