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Build a Better Agency Podcast

Scale and grow your agency with better clients, invested employees, and a stronger bottom line, with Drew McLellan of Agency Management Institute.
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Build a Better Agency Podcast
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Now displaying: October, 2017
Oct 30, 2017

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:

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!

Oct 23, 2017

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:

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!

Oct 16, 2017

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.  

“Leaders of virtual teams need to be great at giving feedback and being transparent.” - Gerald Sexton

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!

Oct 9, 2017

Drew McLellan is the Top Dog 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 the days where creative led agencies have passed and why creative has been replaced by strategy, content, and lead gen
  • The shortage of writers compared to the abundance of art directors and why that’s a pretty big issue for agencies
  • Why creative directors aren’t in that high of demand anymore, and what traditional creative directors look like in the agencies that have them
  • Administrative, account service, and creative services: the three departments that make up most agencies today
  • The triad of leadership - a writer, art director, and digital producer lead the creative services department in lieu of a creative director
  • Why you don’t usually even need to produce spec creative for a pitch anymore
  • Figuring out which roles inside your agency you still need
  • Allocating funds from cut positions elsewhere to serve your clients better

Ways to contact Drew McLellan:

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!

Oct 2, 2017

Ryan Meo has worked with hundreds of agencies and built thousands of websites over the years. About 10 years ago he started a company called Sitetology which turned into TheWebsiteProject.org and has been recently re-branded to ScaleSquad.com. They are a private label website services outsource solution for freelancers, small agencies, and even big agencies. They have helped more agencies than they can count go from trying to do everything on their own, to having a dependable, scalable, and affordable solution.
 

“The only way to scale a service-based business is by learning how to say ‘no’ appropriately.” - Ryan Meo

 

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

  • How Ryan started selling websites — even though he didn’t know how to build them
  • Taking a custom service like web design and making it scalable
  • Why you have to prevent scope creep by being firm with clients on what their deliverables are (or by moving them up to a higher package)
  • How Ryan is able to charge a low, flat rate for his websites and why he puts a lot of focus on what isn’t included in those packages
  • Why you shouldn’t turn away customers who can’t afford your bespoke services
  • Why agencies make a big mistake by talking too much in the initial call with a prospect
  • Building a strong relationship with an outsourced web-dev shop like Ryan’s
  • Why your project manager makes or breaks your agency
  • The importance of over-communication
  • How to mitigate unrealistic expectations
  • What the ideal agency looks like for Ryan

The Golden Nugget:

“The only way to scale a service-based business is by learning how to say ‘no’ appropriately.” – Ryan MeoCLICK TO TWEET

 

Ways to contact Ryan:

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!

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