After working at large agencies in Chicago, Sara Johnson began her own agency, LeadLab Media. Designed to help agencies and marketers with all things paid search, paid social, programmatic and marketing analytics, it’s been a wonderful success. So, how are LeadLab Media’s services sold? In this episode, Sara and Dave ideate together on ways to grow and refine sales operations– everything from the micro to the macro. Two owner/founders with two decades each of experience in digital media. 🔥 Our goal is to give you experiential knowledge you won’t find anywhere else. Welcome to the InWork Podcast. Follow Sara! Website: https://leadlabmedia.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnsonsara/ Contact: sara@leadlabmedia.com
So, all right, so Sarah, I'm so excited for you to join us on the podcast today. We're talking a little bit beforehand about the issue that you're going through and kind of what's coming up for your agency. And it's one that we haven't gotten before, but it's so funny, Sarah, because it's one that I certainly am, can identify with, and it's something that we've had to accommodate for in our companies as well, keep people being out for an extended period of time. So why don't you tell the listeners what the presenting issue is that we're gonna be talking about today?
2
00:36
Yeah, the presenting issue is that I'm the owner founder of Lead Lab Media. And we've been around for eight years and have a company of 12 employees, rocking and rolling. But I'm about to go on maternity leave with my second baby, so I have to prepare being out for an extended period of time and make sure that everything's in order and all my ducks are in order and the team's in order before I leave, and I've got two months to do it.
1
01:07
Yeah, and one of the big things, I mean, you talked about, hey, like fulfillment for clients is on point and client services is on point. The big kind of gap that you have remaining in your agency, and this is totally normal for where you're at size-wise, is who's gonna take over the sales portion so that you can be out for several months and do all the normal parenting mom things that you need to do and still have the business grow while you're out. So I'd love to ask some questions about kind of what your process is right now from lead generation through close of sale. Is that okay?
2
01:45
Sure, absolutely.
1
01:46
So how many meetings or leads are you guys generating every month just on average? And how does that work?
2
01:56
So the reason that this is a challenge is because of just everything that's gone on for the last few years. The great resignation was just like a period of boom for us. Yeah. Where we were overwhelmed with business. You know, people were asking for our help because everyone who does this work, because we do paid media, so we do Google ads, Facebook ads, you know, banner ads, we're in platform, we're optimizing, we're reporting, we're like kind of, you know, in the weeds doing the work. All those people quit in, you know, 2020. And so we were just completely overwhelmed with work, like, hey, so-and-so's gone, can you guys jump in? Yeah, we sure can. So we didn't have – like our sales process went cold from 2019, only because we were just so inundated with work from just referrals alone. So then we've lived on that and grew our team and had to expand because we were overwhelming our staff during that time, and hired a bunch of people, and then the recession. So then it all swung back to the other direction where people were pausing budgets and they were on hold for things, and they were restaffing those positions. So then it changed. So then that referral pipeline just stopped. So we've had to kind of figure out what is the new normal? What does a referral pipeline look like? How do we even get it started? So we've tested a lot of different things. We've tested email campaigns that have done well. We've tested LinkedIn campaigns that have done well. Um, I think the process, it depends on, you know, what we have on and how expensive that is, we could get up to 10, 15 calls a week, um, but it's pricey. To get that, you know, you're working with lead gen companies who, you know, have lists and things like that. Um, and then from there I was taking all of the calls. I was doing all the discovery calls. I was closing all of those calls. I was the only one in that process. So it was pretty much my full day just managing that. And so that's why with me leaving, we have to figure out like, what does that process now look like?
3
04:16
I love it.
1
04:17
This is such a beautiful opportunity for your agency to evolve by necessity. And it's going to make your life so much better after you have a salesperson in place that can take care of this for you. It's just gonna, I'm speaking from my own experiences, by the way, like it changes the game. Your whole life just gets better.
2
04:34
Your lips to God's ears.
1
04:36
So here's a question for you. Do you record any of your sales calls right now, Sarah?
2
04:42
I don't, only because it's not under NDA and I just don't want a problem with that, you know. So I kind of say, you know, this isn't a kickoff, this is just a conversation. I certainly could, I just don't, I've always wanted to avoid the conversation of, well I can't tell you that because we're being recorded and we're not under NDA, whatever. But maybe that won't happen, so I could try it. Well I think that one of the things that you can do
1
05:09
is you can record it onto your device and keep it for yourself. You're not gonna share this with anybody else. And-
2
05:16
For sure, I know that, but does the person being recorded know that?
1
05:20
Well, I think you could say it up front. I mean, we, so we got into a habit of just recording every sales call that we ever take. And if someone has an issue with it, we turn it off. You know, if they just say, I don't feel comfortable being recorded. Fine, we turn it off. Most people don't say anything. They don't care at all. They're just like, oh cool. And if they ask, hey, well why are you recording it? Well listen, we use this for training purposes and it helps me go back and remember some of the things we talked about. And so it could be a really helpful thing for you to have. There's a software that we've used and now I'm not gonna remember the name of it because I don't have it set up on my Zoom anymore because I don't take very many sales calls anymore. But there's a software out there that, and I'll look for it and put it in the show notes, but essentially it's like 50 bucks a month, we put it on all of our sales staff's Zoom accounts, and what it does is it actually records the Zoom, it transcribes it, and this is what's really cool. It's better than Gong in this sense, where Gong would like highlight specific action items or something, it actually says like, hey, this person leaned forward. They were interested in this piece of the conversation, or they sat back and they were disinterested, or they were looking off to the side, they weren't paying attention, and then they came back. And so it actually gives you markers for, oh, I said this thing, and then they responded physically in the video call, and it's really helpful feedback. I will find that and send it to you after this. But yeah.
2
06:49
That's super cool. Yeah, thank you.
1
06:51
So one of the things that I did at first was I started to map out what I call, instead of a sales script, because I don't think that those are really helpful, especially for agency sales, because you could go all over the map. I like to create what I call our sales roadmaps, right? So you think about a road trip, there are, we were just talking about us going to different weddings this past weekend. There are a lot of different ways to get to a destination, typically in the US, right? So like, just thinking about even driving a car, you could take the scenic route and say like, hey, I wanna go this way, up and around and come through. I wanna see friends in Vegas, and then I wanna get to Portland, whatever you're doing, right? And I think that that's the same idea with the sales roadmap. Ultimately, we're trying to get to a destination where we say, hey, what's the next step from this call? Whether that's, hey, you're not a good qualified client or you are very qualified, so here's the next step. We're all trying to get to that spot. So I wonder, Sarah, have you ever written down some of the things that you do just to walk someone through a sales conversation?
2
08:02
I have, but what I've written down is my well-honed roadmap that is very rooted in my story of starting the company and why we exist and what we found is that's difficult to transition to someone else that isn't me. You know, because it's like, well, this is what I would say to this question, and this is how I answer this question. And we have all of that mapped out, but we found that, okay, but what is the lead lap answer? Like, what is it if somebody else was saying that's what would be the answer? So we're in that transition, but I personally, to be honest, it's so natural, I don't even, I can't even tell you why it works. It just works. And so then transitioning that to someone else that isn't me has been a bit of a challenge.
1
08:58
Yeah, and the good news is you're not alone in that. And there is something unique about what you can get away with as the owner founder of the agency that a salesperson could not do. And I remember experiencing that at different agencies where I was like, guys, why aren't you saying this? And they're like, we've tried that. We just can't say it like you would say it. You have a different demeanor, different cadence. There's a different amount of authority. Like I can show up in a quarter zip athletic gear and no one bats an eye. You know, I've got long hair, no one cares. They're like, I just need you to get me results, Dave. Just help me. And so I'm sure that it's similar for you too, Sarah. And one of the things that we started to look at was really going, okay, when we take someone through a sales roadmap, we do 90% for all of our agencies, 90% of our deals are one call closes. So literally within a 30 minute call, we're walking someone through the process and we will then go back and forth on email perhaps, but it's only one call and our close time is usually about two weeks. Now part of the reason why we've been able to do that is, we gave very specific parameters to our sales teams about, hey, here's what it costs to actually deliver on this service, you only have one or two services to sell anyways, so you can kind of figure out where someone's gonna fit in that. But then the other thing that we would do is we'd say, listen, here are the packages. This is what package one, two and three looks like for service A. And so then they just know, hey, this is what it costs. And then what we're able to do is we use Proposify for all of our agreements. We just have templates in there. So they fill in the information, send it out. It takes them less than five minutes to get a proposal out. And when that's happening at speed and they're having eight calls a day per sales member, it's a necessity to have that sort of efficiency. So I guess one of my questions there is, how simple have you made Lead Lab services or is it a la carte, choose your own adventure? I've checked out some of your pricing and stuff, but I'd love for you to describe it to the audience.
6
11:16
Yeah.
2
11:16
So one of the things that makes us unique is we're extremely flexible. Um, so it's hourly model, no minimums, no commitments. So it allows us to really right size our services to the person that we're talking to and the needs and where they're at. So, you know, we could be talking to a big brand that needs a ton of hours to execute lots of campaigns. We can handle that. Or it could be a very small startup that has, like, this maybe needs some training, which we have a training program as well, and maybe some guidance along the way. And that's just a few hours a month. We can do that too. So there is an element of needing to understand, you know, where is that person at? What are the needs? You know, what is their budget? What can they afford? And how can we, you know, right size our services, maybe even just consulting to fit within their budget. So there is some kind of nuance in terms of just figuring out what's needed. But then once we figure out the scope, you know, then it's, you know, we only do what's approved and then that's like, you know, kind of a simple formula once it's approved.
6
12:30
Cool.
1
12:31
By the way, I think I have a good lead for you on a salesperson, if you're looking to hire someone.
4
12:37
So we'll talk about that afterwards.
2
12:38
So my other question is how, what level of experience do you think this person needs to be? Because another challenge that we ran into is we had someone junior who had the time, wanted to take the discovery calls, but I didn't realize how much I was drawing on my 20 years of experience when questions came up or when there was a discussion about should we do this or that, and it kind of became more consultative selling. So it made me rethink, do we need somebody who's been in this industry for a while to be able to answer these questions?
1
13:14
I think that you're going to want to find somebody that's been doing agency sales for at least a couple of years. And if you're looking for consultative sellers, the person that I have in mind is a consultative selling person and they have experience working with agencies and even owned their own agency for a little while when they were in their early 20s, I do think that you're going to need to find someone that you're going to... Have you ever hired a salesperson before, I guess that's one of the questions.
5
13:42
No.
1
13:43
Okay, all right.
2
13:43
Yeah, no.
1
13:44
This is gonna be great.
2
13:45
You're looking at the salesperson.
1
13:46
Yeah, I get it, I love it. Okay, so one of the things that I would do, Sarah, like there have been a lot of studies that have shown that if you do a commission only based salesperson, they don't perform that well, which is so counterintuitive. But they need some sort of base that they can rely on. So what I love to do is I say, look, your base is 70 grand, let's say, like I'm just throwing out a random, your base is 70 and all that I need you to do to get over your base is sell at least 3X of that in a year and then anything after that, we're gonna give you a commission on, 10%, 15% of the project maybe. You can figure that out based off your margins and what you think is best. But basically I give them the incentive of like, it's pretty clear that you have to 3X whatever you're paying your salesperson just to pay for them. So that's why I just give them like, hey man, this is the deal. Here's where you're at, here's what we need you to be at. Here's where I actually want you to be at to hit your goals. So I always bring people in, I'm like, how much money do you wanna make? And if they say 300 grand, sweet, I love that, that'd be amazing, let's get you there. So in order to hit that, here's the number you'd have to hit to be able to get to 300 grand. Here's how we reverse engineer that for leads. And I would make this person an integral piece in generating their own meetings. That is a different skill set, it really, really is, I know that you know that. But that may be a thing that you need to set up that would make it more cost effective, or you just say, listen, we're gonna get you a seamless.ai account. You go pull 1,000 people a day for like 250 bucks a month, or whatever it is right now. I don't know what it is right now. But it was pretty inexpensive for a long time. And you prospect at your own pace, fill up your calendar, and then really our goal is to get you to that number. So based off what my close rate is, is Sarah, we're gonna just say that you're gonna do 80% of what I do. That seems to be the right number, by the way, in my experience, not always. And here's how many you'd need to get to be able to do that. So I think that you need somebody that has some experience in this space for sure.
2
15:59
Okay, good to know. That's great, great insight, thank you.
1
16:04
And I think that one of the things that I'd look for, Sarah, is a self-starter that's gonna come in and sit on calls with you. Someone that can just come in for the next, however long you have until baby comes,
4
16:18
that you can just be like,
1
16:19
hey, sit with me on all these calls, let's go through it. And basically what I always tried to do when we brought a new salesperson in, I'd have them for the first week, all they did was sit there and listen, take notes, watch, observe. And a lot of times the way I'd set that up when we had a prospect on the calls, I'd just say, hey listen, so and so's joining us, they're in training, they're here, they're just observing. And so I just like dispel the awkwardness from the beginning. And prospects never have an issue. And then the next week what I say is, okay, it's week two, I will lead the calls, but I want you to chime in. And if they start getting it after a couple days, you've had four, five, six meetings the first two days of the week, and you're like, hey, I'm gonna be here as your backup, now you're leading it. And you just kind of give them a little bit at a time, and then what I do is I say, okay, next week, week three, you're going to lead all the calls, I'm gonna be silent, unless something starts to go awry. And so you're still there, you can still step in, have a conversation, add a little anecdote. That's what I always did. I'd be like, oh, by the way, here's this case study, here's this thing. And I'd see the salesperson like take a note, you know, like, oh, that was good. Like Dave said something fun. But that's a good tangible way for you to really look at going like, okay, in three weeks, you can be out of sales. And then what you can do, trust but verify, like hey, I just wanna see recordings from this client and that client from your sales calls this week. And so again, you're starting to, continuing to build that trust and verification with whoever the salesperson is and yet you're still doing the other things you need to do to get ready for your leave and it's already taken off your plate. And I really do think if you find the right hire, three weeks is not crazy. Okay, excellent. Well that's great advice. I really appreciate it. Yeah, all right, awesome. Well, Sarah, if people want to engage with Lead Labs and learn more about what you guys do, where can they go to find that? Yeah, so check
2
18:22
check us out on Lead Lab Media or Lead Lab Academy. Lead Lab Academy is our training site. We've got some training modules for anyone who wants to learn how to do this. Or Lead Lab Media if you want any help with your paid media analytics or performance marketing. We come to us, you know, like I said, we're completely flexible hourly models so we can help pretty much anyone. Or check me out on LinkedIn, Sarah Burton Johnson on LinkedIn where we have posts about some articles and just kind of things that are happening and best practices, things like that, that I'll post from time to time.
4
19:02
I love it.
1
19:03
Well, thanks so much for joining us on the call, or on the show today, Sarah. or on the show today, Sarah.
3
19:06
Yeah, thanks Dave, I appreciate the opportunity.