Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Marketing Zone. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and today we unlock the marketing that actually works. You're watching now Media Television.
Welcome to the Marketing Zone where we break down real strategies that help businesses grow smarter and faster. I'm your host, Marilyn Jenkins. Today we're speaking with Brian Downard who teaches agency owners, consultants and coaches the strategies they need to stop chasing and start leading. If you've ever felt like your business controls you instead of that other way around, this episode is for you. Brian is an expert at helping established B2B agency owners, coaches and consultants move past the grind by implementing simple, repeatable client acquisition systems. After successfully building an eight figure consultancy agency himself and training thousands of sales reps, he now focuses on teaching the proven framework behind prospecting in a box system.
Brian's approach is a potent mix of tough love and aggressive execution designed to help founders build a profitable systematized business they truly deserve. Brian, thank you for being here. You focus on helping successful agencies escape what you call the freelance trap. This isn't just about hard work. It's about being stuck doing the work instead of designing the machine. Let's start with the basics.
Let's talk about, you know, what does the freelancer trap look like and you know, in a marketing agency or service business.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And good morning, Marilyn. Thank you so much for inviting me on here. I'm excited to do this with you. The freelancers trap is really simply just people believing especially earlier stages of their business that they need to be full service, sell everything to everyone.
And unfortunately, inevitably what happens when they do that is they just attract a hodgepodge of random clients doing random work. And we call it the freelancers trap because you hit this glass ceiling pretty quickly in terms of your capacity to sell those clients because everything's custom, one off, different, and then you're doing a lot of the work yourself because it's hard to hire people and there's no assembly line to get the work done. I think people reach 10k a month, 50k a month, 100k a month as a freelancer, but without the systems, you've kind of created yourself a glorified job and not a business.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah, good point. In those one off projects are the same that you just can't rely on your income staying steady throughout out.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: So when someone is stuck doing all the work themselves, what's, what's the first system you recommend they build?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: The first system is just definition of who you actually sell to. Right. And I think this takes a lot of Discipline, because you'll get referrals from clients who, like you, trust you, send people your way.
And unfortunately, again, if you're just saying yes to everything tends to again, serve nobody. And so we have something we call the 3s formula. I'll just break down super fast. Basically it's specific person, specific problem, and specific process. And really when you don't have a specific person who you serve, specific problem you help that person solve and then a specific process or way in which you do that, whether that's how you're packaging your offer or the actual deliverable you do, it's really hard to scale cold acquisition. And so people wonder, why can't I get outbound?
Why can't I get my ads to work? It's because we talked about earlier is they don't have a system or a definition around person, problem, process.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: So like you say, you can't be all things to all people. You need to spec to specialize in something.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's a reason. It's a, you know, Robert mentioned earlier, cliche, but it's the reason that phrase is a cliche for a reason, because it's painfully true. And a lot of people know it, but tend to still find themselves there because they're saying yes to any opportunities that come their way.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Well, I think in the beginning you feel like, okay, they're paying me to do something. So you don't think of the big picture in the long term where prospecting in a box, your, your program helps them do that.
[00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And I love, like this is a great, great question or frame, because at the early stages of your business, you do have to be a little flexible. Right. If you've got some experience and you really know like, this is what I'm going to do, this is what I'm going to serve from the very beginning. Great, that's ideal. But if this is kind of your first time you're dipping your toe in, I like to say you got to play the hand that you're dealt. If you got pocket aces, meaning you've got some silver spoon referral partner who's going to send you dentists all day long, go do that. If your next door neighbor is an attorney who runs this attorney association, might, might make sense to go do that. But there's never going to be like one perfect niche for any individual. And what I like to believe is once you sort of exhausted your personal network and you've played the hand you're dealt, then ideally you pick a direction and you go stack up Enough opportunities in that direction, whether through outbound or inbound, that it would make it unreasonable to sell to anyone else. Because right now we do about 10, 15 sales calls a day here at this company. And it's all marketing agencies. Right. We don't have a realtor or a dentist or a roofer coming through the funnel because we're going in a direction and we stacked up so many. That doesn't make sense to go have a conversation with someone else.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: I love that. I love that focus.
So thinking about that freelancer trap, how do you help somebody change from doing the work to leading the business?
[00:05:25] Speaker B: Yeah. So the fastest path is typically leveraging a white label service provider. There's lots of agencies out there who exist to not necessarily sell their services directly to the end user or the end client, but you can white label is the phrase, their services on behalf of your business to sell to your clients. That's typically the fastest way.
Then it would be building the team in house. Eventually you have more control, better margins, and that would be the end game for sure.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Okay, excellent. So being able to get that process. So is it, is it. What's a simple step for someone that can take this week to reduce their hustle and shift towards systems?
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Oh, man. I mean, again, like I would be depending on what you sell. Go and interview and vet some white label service providers and don't pay them out of pocket just yet. If you've got the margin to do that, great. But again, if you're in the freelancers trap now, it's very likely you have a lot of the margin and you're living off of the money your clients pay you. If there is margin, great. Go hire that team as quickly as you can to take the client work off your plate. So you can focus most of your attention on acquisition.
Again, the cliche, but working on the business, rather than always working in the business, focus on bringing in new clients.
And then if you don't have the money on hand right now, know what it costs. You bake that into the price of when you sell your next client. So at least all future clients moving forward, someone's handling the fulfillment and you can start to get it off your plate slowly but surely.
[00:07:00] Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, I love that. And of course, the thing about is, you know, make a note of things you don't enjoy doing. And that would be the first thing to take off your plate.
[00:07:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And I, I challenge a lot of people that unfortunately, some of the things you don't like doing might be the thing you need to actually grow your business. A lot of people get into marketing. Sales are mostly marketing. Cause like I'm creative or I'm technical and I enjoy that piece of it. And there's this phrase you're not in the business that you think you're in a lot of times like you're actually in the business of sales. You're in the business of how if you want to grow and you know, reach million dollar run rate plus you're going to need to learn how to do acquisition really, really well.
Know what you sell well enough to be dangerous and hire a team to do it intelligently. But if you're always doing the work, you're just a solo owner operator and it's very hard to get out of that trap.
Agree.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: That's why a lot of web design companies, it's just one thing and then you get a big chunk of money for the website and then you've got a little bit for hosting and then you have to go sell again next month. Even though you enjoy building website, you're Constant, constantly selling 100%.
[00:08:09] Speaker B: And if I could pile on, there's a silly phrase we use called big head, long tail. I'm not necessarily opposed to websites, they're a little bit custom and it's very subjective. Right. Because people have opinions about what it should be. It's not black and white like we got you more leads, you grew your business. But if you can, you know, have a big chunk of change in the first 30 days to cover your acquisition costs from like a website or a setup fee, et cetera. And then on the back end, the long tail of lower ticket continuity. It's a really great way to cover front end acquisition costs so you can keep spending to acquire more customers but but get then all the customers that come through the front door to pay you something forever. So you stack recurring revenue.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: Okay, very good. And so what other types of freelancers is it best to start focusing on? We all know about, you know, what is it indeed upwork those kinds of things to get someone to do the processes of your business.
Are there other things that you could see that we could do to move towards systems?
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean outside of the offer, I mean if we're talking offer, it's typically their best opportunities for hiring are going to be in your personal network. So networks your net worth, if you know people, it's very. Our best hires have honestly come from our community as well. Past clients we've worked with who know the product, who love the product, come back and Help us run it or your personal network or white label. And eventually, yeah, it might mean going to a hiring site or using a placement or recruitment company.
But outside of that, once you have that set up and it's always a moving target, then it really comes down to the systemization of how you are getting opportunities, whether that's one to one sales or one to many. And then how you have a sales process that makes sure people actually show up and buy and not because they know you or like you or trust you, but because you've nailed your specific person problem and process. Otherwise cold acquisition, like I said, just isn't going to work.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Right, right. So how do you think mind shift, mindset shift around being the CEO of your business rather than the service provider helps attract better cl.
[00:10:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean you have to practice what you preach. Right. So in our world, if we're helping people try and you know, become that person version of themselves, it doesn't make sense if we're doing that. I saw this really, really funny story about a AI sales company that's getting under fire and like they're just getting sued right now, having some problems. I won't name the company, but some of the comments were like, if you are using real salespeople to sell an AI salesperson, that's the first red flag. Right. So it's the same thing. You kind of have to, if you preach it, you got to practice it. Like I don't like, I hate that saying, those who can't do, teach.
You gotta be able to do or you're just kind of lying to yourself. And that's where the imposter syndrome probably comes from. Right. If you feel that you might take a hard look in the mirror.
[00:11:07] Speaker A: Right? Right.
This is, this is very interesting. I'm looking forward to continue conversation. And we'll be right back.
Up next, we're tackling lead generation chaos. Why? Hopping on referrals.
We'll be right back. Up next, we're tackling lead generation chaos. Why hoping for referrals isn't a strategy. And how to build an engine of predictable outreach.
We'll be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television. And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the marketing zone of NOW Media Television. Let's started get dive into our next breakthrough.
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Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. We are with client acquisition expert Brian Downer talking about building systems instead of just hustling. Brian Many agencies survive on a feast or famine cycle and they dread the famine. The problem facing many of the audience is that they rely on random outreach or hope referrals will happen.
And it often feels like the leads don't come when needed or the funnel feels empty. This chaos makes scaling impossible. Can you tell us what's wrong with expecting clients just to find you or without a clear system in place?
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, if just because you build it doesn't mean they will show up. Right. And the reality is most people are not advertising anywhere near a level they need to in order to get themselves in front of new people.
Whether that's spending money on advertising from like running Facebook ads or potentially producing content or doing outreach. I had a, you know, a gentleman I spoke with yesterday, he's like, I sent a hundred cold emails and I don't have any sales calls yet. I'm like, yeah, because you probably need to send 3,000 emails a day just to get a few positive responses. Then you have to work them and book them on sales calls. And so I think people just don't have an expectation around how much is they need to do in order to put themselves out there.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: I think you're right. I think people assume if I did 100 outreach, I should get at least, you know, five calls. And that's in cold email. We have so much noise in our email inbox these days, it's just ridiculous.
Yeah, I agree.
So in your work with agencies, what outreach strategy consistently brings in higher quality leads?
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say paid advertising. Right. And then what's funny about paid advertising is once people start to opt into your paid advertising, you asked what's the maybe most effective outbound or outreach strategy? Right. You do outbound and outreach to the people from your ads. And it's so funny to me because people who come through your ad will still treat you like you're cold calling sometimes. Like, who is this? What is this about? I don't remember doing that. I'm not interested anymore. And so you really have to, like, if you don't yet have the budget for ads, you haven't quite gotten there. I believe in cutting your teeth genuinely on doing the colder outbound because it'll build up that muscle of being able to work through that with a stranger. And it's so hard for people to put themselves out there like that. Right. And it might sound silly, but I often say to our clients, like, you have to lower the stakes in your mind. Right. We're just spinning through space on a rock. Life's aren't on the line here. We're not like surgeons or anything. The worst thing that happens is someone is a little bit mean to you or hangs up the phone. And once you get really good at navigating these types of conversations, calling the prospect, picking up the phone and dialing, you'll find out how nice people actually are if you're there just coming from a place of service. And so it's funny with all the, you know, I'm going to date myself here, but all the social medias and AIs, your phone is like, this is a place you can create a crazy amount of opportunities. I booked seven sales calls yesterday in two hours with my phone calling people who are on our list.
And people need to be willing to do some things that are uncomfortable to get what they want. Because if you do what's easy, your business will be hard. And if you do what's hard, your business will be easy.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Well, I think the cold calling is, it does have, you know, it takes thick skin, you know, and, and people are worried about it. It's like, what if I'm bothering somebody? Yeah, but what if they really need your service?
[00:16:02] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to believe in your service so much that you would be doing them a disservice by not telling them about it. And for anyone who hates cold calling, because it is my last recommendation in terms of like, we have a hierarchy of outbound from like your warmest opportunities to the coldest. And I personally recommend initiating a conversation on social media first. So Facebook, dm, Instagram, dm. And in a perfect world, they respond back and then you can call them. But you can also, for people who don't respond, pick up the phone, reference that first touch point. It's a little bit of a pattern interrupt, foot in the door to be able to get them to be like, who is this? What was this about? And give you just that little extra 2, 3 second in to make your next ask.
So it's little less than cold. But still, again, I think it's a perfect way to Cut your teeth and learn how to communicate with the people you serve, figure out what they really need. And if you can't do that, even calling leads from your ads, it's going to be difficult. It's going to be challenging.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: I agree. I think, I think that starting off with social media is great.
LinkedIn works well depending on who your your ideal client is.
But starting with that social media touch, it's easier. And I know it's like it's not as hard as a cold call, but at least it is like you said that one foot in the door and looking at that predictable lead generation engine we talked about, how would you help somebody design that? Instead of being sporadic effort, is it like certain amount of time blocking, that sort of thing, how do you help them fix that?
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's in my opinion two buckets you need to solve for. The first is going to be the actual opportunities and how you are generating them. And so like I said, my recommendation would be setting up some type of paid ads campaign from Facebook.
I'm going to try not to go too far down the rabbit hole. But essentially you should expect if you're running a high ticket B2B agency, coaching consulting company of some type, your cost of acquisition from Facebook ads should be in the ballpark around 500, up to 1200, maybe 1500 dollars on the high end. And so if you're spending $500 a month on Facebook ads but your funnel's not dialed in and you're wondering why you're not getting customers, it's because even if your funnel is dialed in, you should only probably be getting about one client from that ad spend. And so again, having a healthy expectation of what do I actually need to spend to get this outcome and what are the economics of my offer that I can cash collect enough money upfront to cover the acquisition costs are just a lot of things that people tend to learn the hard way, which is why our clients come to us is they kind of want that shortcut. And so the bucket, the first bucket is how do I get opportunities. So running ads, two biggest things you want to do for ads is again high ticket B2B companies, I call it a two step funnel. Basically you're going to send people to a landing page where it's name, email, opt in, then a calendar. I tend to not do lead magnets because they tend to attract people who know they kind of have a problem or pain point but they're not really looking for a solution yet. That's most of the market I Want to run ads that speak specifically to a solution for the people who are actively looking for, hey, I know I've had this for a while now, I want to solve it. And so try not to do like just opt ins because your cost of acquisition will be like three to four times higher. Your cost per lead might be less for running lead magnet ads, but your acquisition cost is going to be a lot higher because they're not actively looking for that solution. So that's, that's the first bucket.
Second bucket is going to be the process by which you actually work those leads to get them to show up. Am I okay to share my screen? I saw previous guests do that. Can I just share something really quickly here?
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: So something we just designed for our sales team is essentially what we call their, their daily hunting cadence. And every single day, basic sales 101 is like you do your admin work, you update pipeline, notes tasks, you have your end of day report, but your second priority is your hot list. Who are the people who are newly booked on your calendar who are previously booked people? So follow ups, make sure they actually show up when you don't get ghosted. And then you work pipeline. Who is closest to closing? Who are people I've spoken to that need to reschedule at no show that showed interest but fell off the radar? Great. Then we can go to Outbound, which would be asking for referrals. The single highest return on your time in sales is asking current clients for referrals are easiest to close and easiest to get. Then you can kind of work your new leads that are coming through the funnel there. And then reactivation would be like once a week, once a month, depending how big your list size is to aged leads who are older than like 60, 90 days. And something, you know, really interesting that we've seen as November has just slowed down a bit in terms of our ads because we're competing against. And like a lot of you are, if you're running paid ads, e commerce companies who are pushing Black Friday deals, pushing holiday promotions, your ads aren't going to be as effective or it's going to cost you a lot more. Reactivations are an incredible way to get people in your database. You currently have to raise their hand and say, yeah, I might be interested in that, pick up the phone and call them. Just like if you were doing outbound cold and you set them on your call on your calendar. So it's that combination of making sure you have people coming through your funnel, actually booking themselves, opting in and then a process by which you work those leads to maximize how many people show up on sales calls.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: I love that. And of course right now with going into the holidays, the ad ad costs are going to go up. What do you feel about retarget ads as opposed to cold outreach ads?
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So something we're doing right now as well. And I like retargeting ads in terms of not only the cost of the reach to get front of people, but it allows you to be more matter of fact with the offer. Very often with cold acquisition or people who are seeing you for the first time, you want to talk more about pain solved for them rather than what you sell. But in retargeting ads, you can go focus more on what you sell, which is frankly what most people are best at talking about out, which is what they start with, which is why cold acquisition doesn't work. Once they're in your your network or they've watched 50% of your video ad or they landed on your page but didn't opt in. It's a great way to actually show them what they get to get those fence sitters who want a little more information off of the fence.
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Love that. Yeah. Especially this time of year. It makes sense to, to come up with and less ad spin for the same thing and still just retarget those people.
Brian, for agency owners listening who need to implement the core principles of prospecting and vox system right now, where can they find your best resources?
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Yeah. So prospectingondemand.com has a link to our demo video for what we do. And then I have a YouTube channel as well. With a lot of our content, we give away frankly some of our best stuff on there. That would be the best place to find our top resources.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Fantastic. Yeah, Definitely. Check out ProspectOnDemand.com we'll be right back. Up next, we're diagnosing message mismatch while your why your marketing is hitting silence and how you define your dream client so they immediately recognize themselves in your message.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: Love it.
[00:23:20] Speaker A: We'll be right back with more tools, tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television.
And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the marketing Zone on NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. We're continuing our conversation with Brian Downer, focusing on how to escape chaos and build a reliable business. If your lead engine is running but no one's responding, the problem is likely your message. The Problem facing many in this audience is they send generic messages and talk to everybody and it often feels like no one is responding because people don't feel like that's for me. Will focus on solving a common problem of generic marketing, emphasizing the strategicness, the strategic necessity of niching down and crafting specific language that resonates immediately with your dream clients, pain points and aspirations. Brian, what is speaking to everyone often mean? That you're really speaking to no one?
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Yeah, people you know, especially if we're talking a B2B scenario, the decision making process is usually around If I put $1 into this ATM, is it going to give me $2 back? And if you're trying to sell lead gen services as an example to a lawyer, a roofer, a plumber, pizza shop, and you're trying to charge the same price, same promise, same deliverables, like we're going to get you 20 to 30 leads a month. That promise is means a lot of different things depending on who you sell to. And so ultimately, unless they were referred to you by someone who they like and trust, it's very hard for them to want to buy your offer because they're not really clear. Like, well is it really for me that's not really the outcome that I want. And then you get if they're nice, I need to think about it. And they drift and ghost you because they don't want to say no to your face or they're just going to say no, I'm not interested because they don't understand what the actual outcome in dollars and cents is to them.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Okay. So I think it means also refining your message a bit. You need to know what they want instead of just 100%. These are the things you do. Exactly. And how do you help someone refine or define their dream client? So the messages do land.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's so funny because it feels like when I'm what I'm about to say is like back to basics. And you know, there's frankly a reason why basics win championships because you need to do those well to get this right. And so how you can define it is you got to pick a vertical. Right. Ideally, you know, we're talking like as home services, law, medical, then ideally you pick a sub niche of that industry as well, of that vertical. And this is the part that most people ignore because they think it's beneath them or it's too basic. You need to intimately be able to describe the pain in the words that they use to describe their problem because they're not Like, I have a Facebook ads problem. I need to go run some Facebook ads. They're like, if you're a roofer who's got, you know, a few million dollars on the line every year, you're thinking, my guys are sitting around the workshop and my trucks aren't on the road. And so we have this phrase where people don't buy when they understand you, they buy when they feel understood. And so how you actually can get to doing this is actually serving those people. We've been working with marketing agencies here at Pod for more than 10 years. And so when we run paid ads and we speak to these pain points, I get people who come onto sales calls and tell me that ad spoke to my soul. Because we know what they're actually going through and they feel seen and heard, therefore they feel that we understand them and they take action.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: I love that. And I agree with the thing about, and one of the suggestions in the beginning, I've worked with POD for a long time as well, is if you don't understand an industry that you want to to understand is buy someone in the industry lunch and ask to pick their brain. You, you've got to understand what they're thinking and what they're looking for. And ideally you have some connection to that so that you can get your message aligned to the pain points that you can help solve.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. I had a guy, I was giving some advice on his ads yesterday and he was running, hey, are you run a service based business?
I'm like, that's way too vague. And that's not how they describe themselves. Like, they don't even describe themselves as home service providers. Right. They're either, I'm an H VAC guy, I'm a roofer, I'm a immigration attorney. Right. They don't just like usually say, oh, I'm just a lawyer. So when we use these giant buckets that are vague to categorize people, they tend to feel like it's not for me. And then the words that you use to describe the pain points matter as well. I talk about like, again, I'll just use roofing as an example. If you've got the solo owner operator making, you know, 100 grand a year versus the multimillion dollar roofing company, they might have the same problem. I need more leads, I need more opportunities. But the way in which they describe it and the words they use are very different. And so we have this joke. Never use the phrase struggling in your ads. Like, are you struggling to generate leads? Because Guess what? You're going to attract people who are struggling rather than, hey, do you have a large roofing company who needs to keep your trucks on the road and your crew busy? Okay, now you're speaking to that segment of the market. People sometimes tell me, like, Brian, like the big whale clients, Multimillion dollar companies aren't on Facebook. Like, yeah, they are. You're just not communicating to them the pain points in the way that they describe it. So they don't feel like what you sell is for them because they're not struggling. They're fine, but they need more opportunities. And they're just describing it in a different way.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: I love it. It all comes down to the way that you're rewarding your ad and yeah, to appeal to that larger company that can indeed afford your services.
So when you're thinking about laying that out, we're obviously talking like a framework of your ad. So we're talking about the text ad, not Google ppc, but Facebook ads. How do you. What's a simple framework that, that makes people say, yeah, that's for me. And. And your right. Clients say, that's for me.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm, I'm so glad you asked this. And so two parts and that was what I want to jump to next.
First part is the copy itself. So there's this phrase called above the fold. Basically the text you see before the see more button that kind of shows you the rest of the text. You want to have an ICP call. So ideal client profile, call it, hey, you roofing company that's got more than five, you know, active trucks or does $5 million a year plus something that calls them out specifically and then a pain point. And you need to keep your crew busy, not twiddling their thumbs at the workshop. So always it's ICP call out, pain point. The rest of the copy, honestly, doesn't matter as much.
It can be more around just like the frame that I'm about to give you for the video. Now, Robert was just on the show here before me. I was listening to him. Really great advice around video marketing. I strongly believe that even if it feels uncomfortable, get out your cell phone, do a selfie video, and it might take you fifty to a hundred takes to get get it right. But a framework we recommend is like, and I'll just do ours because I know ours pretty well. I've done it like way too many times to count. It's something like, hey, are you a marketing agency and you're not getting as many clients as you Want. Well, here's three reasons why and what to do about it instead. So number one is you're doing things that take too long. So you're doing A, B or C, or you're doing things that are too complicated, like X, Y, and Z, or you're not doing anything at all. Kind of hoping you'll grow off of word of mouth and referrals. Now, if any of that resonates with you and you want to change it, follow me over to the other side of this video. We put together a quick demo on our system that does ABC to help you solve X, Y, Z.
And if that sounds like it could help you go check it out, peace.
And so we aren't talking about, we do coaching, we do mentorship, we do Facebook ads, we do warm calling. We do whatever those things are. We're just talking about, here's the pain you're in. If you want to change that, go check out what we do.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: I love that.
[00:31:14] Speaker B: I mean, describe it in a way.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: The person.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: And describe it in a way that's actionable. And you're. You're literally pushing their buttons and saying, this is exactly. You're weeding out the. The tire kickers as well.
[00:31:27] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:31:30] Speaker A: Excellent. So it. Now, are there any specific metrics that you're looking at whenever you. The ads are running? You can see is people are coming through. Is it. Are you going for video views? Are you going for leads? What's. What would you suggest?
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Yeah, so the number one metric to look at is your cost of acquisition. Right.
So typically, you know, in. As a rule of thumb, you. Assuming all your other margins are on point, we're not going to go down that whole rabbit hole. Right now you want to be comfortable to spend about 20 to 25% of an average customer's lifetime value to acquire them. So if you have a customer that's on average worth $10,000 to you, assuming your other margins are on point, you should be willing to spend about 2,000 to $2,500 to acquire them. Obviously, less is better, but that's a healthy threshold to be aiming at. And then what I'd be looking at doing is spending. Now that you know, okay, if I 10K LTV $2,000 cost of acquisition, I'd multiply that $2,000 cost of acquisition by three to pour that $6,000 into a campaign before you shut it down. Because if you can get a customer for 5,000, $6,000, it's not ideal, but at least you validated the funnel. Has worked and now we can work backwards in a perfect world. Again, cost of acquisition 500 to 1500 max. Kind of depends on LTV as well. That's just a rule of thumb. Cost per booked call 100 to $200. Cost per lead 15 to $30. Again, this is flexible depending on the space but that's typically what I'm looking for to make sure all my metrics are on point. And then also a click through rate of from the ad of about 3% opt in page 15% self booking rate 10% tends to be a healthy expectation for when you're doing B2B ads.
[00:33:18] Speaker A: I love that. I love it. And how can someone test their message really quickly without a full rollout?
[00:33:26] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. So I would say content is probably the best way to do that. Organic. Whether that's inside of Facebook groups or not being too self promotional or if you've got any type of audience producing content on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. I tend to when you're towards the beginning use content as a sales tool, not the means by which you'll attract people. So you kind of have to go tested where there's already eyeballs an active audience. So Facebook groups tend to be a good spot for that unless again you kind of have your own little audience as well.
[00:34:00] Speaker A: I love that. I love it. And Facebook groups are a great place to be like a value add when it comes to kind of getting your message out there and finding your ideal client. And have you found that those Facebook groups have done really well for your clients as well as PewDiePie?
[00:34:16] Speaker B: 100%. I've actually unfortunately seen running a and owning a Facebook group has not been as effective of a strategy as it used to be.
But being in other ones, especially ones where the members had to pay or do something or qualify to actually be there.
The good way to test the quality of a Facebook group is to look in see are all of the posts self promotional and have no engagement. That's usually a sign of not so good of a Facebook group. But if you're in a place where people are providing value, they are engaging with each other, it's not just a self promotional festival.
Those tend to be better especially if they're paid communities.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: I absolutely agree about looking at what the what the most posts are. Absolutely. Okay, we'll be right back. And coming up our final and most critical segment scaling without burnout how to ensure growth leads to more freedom, not more chaos. We'll be right back with more tools tactics and truths to elevate your marketing. This is the marketing zone of NOW Media Television. And we're back. I'm Marilyn Jenkins and you're watching the marketing zone of NOW Media Television. Let's dive into our next breakthrough.
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Welcome back to the Marketing Zone. We are in our final segment with Brian Downer and we're tackling the paradox of success for many high performing agency owners. When they hit that next revenue milestone, they don't feel successful, they feel swamped. The problem facing many of the audience is they chase growth, but it also often leads to longer hours and more stress. It often feels like they're losing control. Rather than stepping into a scalable business, we're focusing on how to build a business that serves your life, not the other way around.
Brian, thank you for joining us. And what are the classic signs that growth is happening but it's not sustainable?
[00:36:43] Speaker B: I mean, you're just saying yes to anything that falls on your plate, right? We spoke about this a little bit on the first segment. But you know, it's not sustainable if you can't create an assembly line around that. So if you're selling different things to different people, you can't scale your sales team because that's a puzzle piece and there's no standardization of that sales process. And then there was no assembly line fulfillment where the team is just spinning plates and trying to keep them all up in the air. I'm at an agency doing, you know, $500,000 a month the other week and on paper like, wow, that's amazing.
They were, their profit margin was like 3%. They were taking home a couple grand a month and just running in circles because they're doing too much. I would much rather have a company that's doing $100,000 a month in revenue and profiting 30 to 40.
That's a much healthier place to be because you're taking home more money and you've got less stress.
[00:37:36] Speaker A: Yes, I agree. What about the thing about no one to do it as good as I can.
You know, that's a. That's something I hear a lot. You know, it's like, I. I did this, I built this. I can do this.
[00:37:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's a belief that you have to break if you want the business to grow past yourself. If you want an asset. Right. If you like being. I tell people all the time, you have to decide what business you're in. You have to decide if you want to be a freelancer or you want to run a business. Both have pros and cons. There's nothing wrong with being a freelancer. There's not. But if you tell yourself, I want to make a lot more money, I want the business to run without me. I want to be able to step away someday. I want to be able to sell it, the freelancer route is not going to create a model by which you can do that.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: Agreed. Agreed. So how do you help agencies build processes that allow that growth without burning out the founder?
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And I gotta give my business partner, Alex Schlinsky, a lot of credit here. He wrote a book up on my shelf called the Anti Hustlers Handbook, and he talks about. Define design. Do I think personally, burnout doesn't come from working hard. Humans are very, very good at working hard. A lot of the hardest working people in the world do not get paid accordingly. They work, you know, 18 hours. I'm making up something 18 hours a day, seven days a week, walk uphill both ways to work, but they don't necessarily get paid for that. And so you have to define first what your definition of success is, because inevitably, if you don't, when you reach that goal, you will move the goalpost forward and keep chasing some unattainable thing. I heard a song recently. It talks about, if it's not good enough right now, then it will never be good enough. And that really resonated with me. Like, if I can't appreciate where I am right now, because this is the goal that I had for myself 10, 20 years ago when I started this journey, I'm never going to be happy because I'm just going to keep moving the goalpost. And so you have to define it first. Design the process to accomplish what the definition was, and then you do it. But if you don't do the early work and you just work for the sake of working, that's how you're going to create burnout. Because you're going to be doing things without any purpose or reason, and that creates the burnout, in my opinion.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Okay. And how do you kind of work that around like delegation or outsourcing, does that play a, a role in scaling your system?
[00:39:56] Speaker B: Yeah, again it depends on what you're selling. So software businesses, you will need at some level some customer support. But there's going to be better margins, maybe less overhead in the business that we run or if you're running any type of like person to person service based, high ticket business. Yeah. There is going to be a requirement to hire people who are ideally smarter than you and pay them rightly so. So I know it might be scary to like oh, I have to pay this person six figure salary, but that person can earn your business five to ten more times than what it is currently earning. So yeah, invest in talent. But you can't do that unless you go back to the very beginning of our conversation and you actually define specific person problem process. Because that'll allow you to not be a generalist anymore. It'll allow you to become a specialist. Specialists get to charge more. When you charge more, you make more profit, which means better margins and you can hire better talent to eventually step away from the business.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: I love that. So we are being, we are choosing one service and one person to sell it to so you can systematize it and sell it without having to analyze every single project that you'd go through.
[00:41:04] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. Alex runs a million dollar a month agency and they just sell leads to mass tort attorneys. That's it. We don't do SEO, we don't do video, we sell leads to mass toward attorneys.
Just do that over and over and over and over again. And that's how you get the assembly.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Line and you become the expert in your field.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: Exactly. And then people will trust you and pay you a premium because they see you're the person who does XYZ the best. And it's a easy example. But like who gets paid more, the heart surgeon or the family doctor? Right, it's going to be the heart surgeon because they specialize.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: And what is your.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: They probably get to see less clients and make more money.
[00:41:41] Speaker A: Well that is true. That is true. That's like the eye surgeon as opposed to. Yeah, exactly. Makes a lot of sense there.
And let's talk about client acquisition automations. What? How can somebody automate part of their client acquisition or onboarding without losing that authenticity but still streamlining their efforts?
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Yeah. So there's a lot of amazing tools and I'm not going to sit here, pretend to be the tech expert. This is again why we pay smart people who have those skills to go do this. But a lot of what we do is just simply setting up workflows, automations using Zapier and Go High Level the software that we use. And there is always going to be some type of human touch point for our offer. Even if you have a product that has less of a human touch point like software, it still makes sense to have a human go help them be onboarded. But there's a lot you can do through Zapier through High Level to when someone does X, Y, Z thing it triggers a workflow of getting their onboarding email, sending them the documentation to sign triggers a slack reminder to let the team know to welcome them, add them into slack. And so it depends on the delivery of what you sell. But I would start to look at if you don't have that answer for yourself, invest in being around other people who have that figured out or paying people smarter than yourself with those skills to go do it. I personally think a lot of tech is commoditized. It's pretty easy to find someone to do that, to find someone who's really good at sales that's a bit more challenging. So I really encourage people to focus most of their energy as entrepreneurs on learning how to sell. Package your offer and then finding people to fulfill is usually pretty easy.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think because okay, we all want mrr, we all want clients that are monthly recurring revenue but without lead generation we're not going to have anybody to talk to to continue to pay us as we have attrition now. So being able to.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: Yeah, and even the best agencies are going to turn clients no matter what you get too good of results, you could get bad results and I apologize, I think I jumped the gun there. But you were going to ask about.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: Automating which part of this automated client acquisition. So I agree with the onboarding using that for automating. But yeah like you encourage automating like the follow up of older leads. Yeah, you want to reach out and personally touch them periodically. But shouldn't there be a way that we can automate keeping in touch with them?
[00:44:01] Speaker B: Yeah, so we use a platform called Closed Bot Shout out to Bryce and Laura Decora. I love them, not only personally but their product is amazing with the state of AI is and people do this, they break the rules all the time. But typically you're not allowed to have AI initiate an outbound conversation either via outbound dial or text. And so you have to have your prospects respond to something that is a automated workflow first. So in Layman's terms messages that you've pre set up to send to them to solicit a response from them. Then the AI can take over about, you know, we book about 150ish sales calls, a little bit more depending on the month per month here. And 20% of those 20, 25% come from close bot. Just working the leads, texting them, following up once they've responded. And the beauty of this, you can also do this on a, of a reactivation campaign. So sending a very binary yes or no like hey, interested in checking out what our end of your offer is? Text to your database. Then once you get responses, AI can step in close bot and start to have that conversation, qualify them and then set them on your calendar.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Wow, that's pretty incredible. So closebot is working really well for you. So you initiate that and then. Okay, excellent. That's good to know. I've seen about them, heard about them.
So. Okay, good. So say that we are at 10k. Mrr. What's the one small scale hack that you'd recommend to. To get. Just get past that or, or you know, build your company.
[00:45:36] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you, if the constraint is fulfillment and meaning you're just doing all your time on the client work, then the easy answer is like you need to, you need to get a team, one person, ideally junior media buyer, junior SEO person to start to take the work off your plate or you will live on that hamster wheel forever because you can't actually go focus on acquisition. Now if you do have time margin, what I'd recommend doing and the budget to do it covered this a little bit earlier. Run paid ads like it is how you will get people, especially during the holidays who will come to you with their hand raise. I have this problem I want to talk about. It sounds like you have an answer. And those conversations are so much easier to have than the alternative of kind of looking for a needle in a haystack in terms of like outbound or like does this person have the problem? Do they not have the problem? It takes a lot of sales and setting skills to turn like someone who might not be looking for that into an opportunity through the questions you ask. But yeah, it kind of depends on where the constraint is, is in the business. So film the constraint, hire team, demand constraint. I'd be looking at running paid advertising.
[00:46:39] Speaker A: I love that you're. You're right though. Paid ads. You, you want to get. Talk to their problems, talk to their problems or pain points.
Brian, this has been incredibly valuable. I really appreciate your time here today. Where can people follow your work and continue this conversation about, you know, aggressive execution and Systems and scaling 100%?
[00:46:58] Speaker B: So prospectingondemand.com is the main website. From there, you can find a lot of the links to our resources, our YouTube channel. You can check out the demo video of what we do. And if you're interested in possibly getting some help or just having a conversation, we can point you in the right direction. You can kind of book a call to the website there as well.
[00:47:17] Speaker A: Thank you, Brian. Thank you so much. You've provided such clear and actionable frameworks for our audience. The takeaway here is simple but powerful. Hustle is what you do for your business. Systems are what you build into your business so that it can grow without you becoming the bottleneck. If you're ready to stop chasing and start leading, today's conversation is your playbook. It's time to build the predictable, profitable, and enjoyable business you deserve. Thank you for turning to the marketing zone. We'll see you next time.
