It's Not About You - Agency Inner Circle #4

It's always about them.

Author

Tim Kilroy
12 Jun • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

Table of Contents

You’re The Most Important Person

When I was a kid (back in the 1830s), there was this public service ad that showed during cartoons - You’re The Most Important Person in the Whole Wide World. It was all about self esteem and the wonders of being a kid. Cool stuff. But as we move on from kiddie show and into the world of agency leadership and agency sales, you are never the most important person in the conversation (😞 - sorry).

This week, I’ve had this conversation no less than 5 times…the regular and critical mistake agency leaders are making is thinking about the stuff that excites them when dealing with staff or prospects. In both of those circumstances, the emphasis needs to be on how the reciepient hears and understands what you are saying. Sometimes your excitement can be contagious, but more often, talking about things from your perspective leads to these results:

  • EMPLOYEES: Whatever they are talking about feels like change and I hate change.

  • PROSPECTS: I don’t care about freakin’ algo changes and cost caps - how does this help me increase my new customer margin? They don’t understand my business.

In both circumstances, you’ve built a hurdle that you and your message (even if it is perfectly aligned with the other party’s wants and needs) have to jump over because you delivered it in your context rather than the context of the audience.

Mastering context is the fastest way to engender trust from your team and to allow your prospect with imbue you with authority & expertise.

Lots More Data About Lead Gen

We got a bunch more data - the graph below shows the percentage of total leads by channel, the revenue generated & the cost. To no one’s surprise, referrals and inbound generated 88% of leads & 92% of revenue at a cost of roughly 8% of marketing spend. That means 8% of the revenue consumed 92% of the marketing budget. Does this mean that you shouldn’t do outbound or ads?

Don’t answer yet…

The data is a little skewed because 100% of agencies answering have referrals and inbound as channels, whereas only 15% are doing outbound and 4% are doing ads. The 15% who are doing outbound & the 4% that are doing ads represent about 45% of the revenue from the group. So, outbound and ads might be hard and expensive, but there is a direct correlation between revenue scale and those channels. More data to come.

Ads & Outbound are less efficient, but 100% corrolated with significantly higher revenues.

The Economy

Inflation slowed YoY in the US. The UK showed economic growth of 0.4% last quarter when a decline was forecast & the World Bank is showing that the global GDP is growing faster than expected and is now at 2.6% YoY growth, up from 2.4% forecasted at the beginning of the year.

This is generally good news - the global economy is growing, interest rates are falling in the EU & UK, and likely here in the US soon. This should unlock some consumer optimism, and my instinct tells me that the current tight media spend and marketing economy will be looking much stronger in the 2nd half of 2024. 😃

Best of The Slack Channel

Jake from Uptown Cow started a discussion about how much time people take off…spoiler alert…it’s not enough….

News & Notes

  • If you are an agency that prospects and does research on ecommerce brands, there is no more comprehensive data set than Charm.io. (Here is a link to my walkthrough & to Charm’s own tutorials. (And in a completely serendipitous event, one of my former clients, Rozee Digital, is a Charm Case Study. An annual license to Charm Prospecting Pro is $10,000 - but because I love y’all, you can pick up 12 months of Charm through me for only $3500. This could be an amazing opportunity to elevate and amplify your prospecting. I only have 4 licenses left at this price and am certain that they will be gone before Monday - so jump in quick.

  • Stay tuned for interviews upcoming with Tim Keen, Marcel Petitpas, and Hubspot Inbound speaker Dale Bertrand. These are gonna be great conversations.

  • And later this week, look out for a beta launch of my new TruTarget OS - a cold messaging approach that will help you generate better sales conversations & more revenue from your cold outreach. I’m pretty excited about it. It is a 6 week class (taught live & via video modules) that I’m going to sell for $2K or something eventually. But it’s going to be $495 for the 1st two cohorts (launching June 25th and July 15 - limited to 10 agencies each…)

  • BTW, if you have something to say to the group to educate or inspire us, LMK and we can see if we can get you in this newsletter.

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