Join Dave Valentine in a captivating podcast conversation with Tyler Pigott, founder and CEO of Lone Fir Creative, a digital marketing agency. In this episode, they explore the world of B2B marketing, tech education, and healthcare. Learn how Tyler's creative agency has thrived in these industries, bridging the gap between ed tech, health tech, and more. Tyler also reveals their unique horizontal niche, focusing on HubSpot expertise. The discussion delves into sales strategies and their evolving sales process. You'll gain insights into the number of business development meetings, the changing sales cycle, and how they generate leads. Tyler shares valuable data from HubSpot and practical approaches to meet sales goals. Additionally, you'll hear about their strategic approach, including fit calls, discovery, and lower ticket offers that lead to higher client retention. Tyler emphasizes the significance of a structured strategy to achieve better results and long-term partnerships. This podcast episode is a treasure trove of information for business leaders and sales enthusiasts looking to enhance their strategies and hit their sales targets. Our goal is to guide you through the intricacies of B2B marketing and effective sales approaches. Welcome to the InWork Podcast. Connect with Tyler: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerpigott/ tyler.pigott@lonefircreative.com www.lonefircreative.com
See, well, Tyler, I am so excited to have you on the podcast today. I know we've been talking about our love for the Pacific Northwest and older or aging men with long hair.
3
00:12
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that.
2
00:14
Yeah, man. It's always good.
1
00:16
It's been great. And I know that you have this brilliant creative agency called Loan for Creative, and I'd love to hear a little bit about that. And then a little bit about the problem that we're gonna be talking about today in sales in general. Just give us a lay of the land of where things are at with that.
3
00:35
Yeah, no, I love it.
2
00:36
So first off, they find it fun to be on the podcast and fun to chat with a fellow Pacific Northwest native. But yeah, no, I've started a creative company, a marketing company about nine years ago called Loan for Creative and lots of different phases of from startup to making money and all that good stuff. But primarily we serve B2B clients kind of in the tech education and healthcare space. And oftentimes they'll bridge the gap between those ed tech, health tech, med tech, and all sorts. And then, so that's kind of like our vertical niche and our horizontal niche is HubSpot. So we help build brands on HubSpot. So lots of different companies have their CRMs, their marketing platforms, their websites, their automation, all those different things. And HubSpot's a cool tool that actually does allow a lot of it to just be under one roof in one house. And so have developed an expertise on that over the last number of years. So yeah, that's kind of us in a little bit of a nutshell. And then I know we wanted to kind of jump into, I love your format of your podcast, kind of jumping into kind of, you know, tearing apart issues, if you will, or challenges and look at it from different angles. So I don't know what the best way to start with that is,
6
01:52
but.
1
01:53
It's okay, man, I got you. You're along for the ride, man. We got it from here. So dude, why don't we through, because obviously, you know, sales is such a lag measure, right? Like, it's the final result that we're aiming for. Give me a sense, how many, not just leads, but how many business development meetings are you taking with potential clients on a month average?
3
02:15
Yeah, about 15 to 20 new business ops every month. Awesome.
2
02:20
Which is pretty decent, you know? I would say in past years, the sales cycle's been a lot shorter. So call it like 25 to 35 days for a deal to actually go across the finish line. And then in the current year we're in, most of those have extended to kind of more like 75 to 90 days. And so just simple math, that's kind of like three times or three X. That means you need three times as many offs in the pipeline to be able to kind of, you know, do what you were doing from a number standpoint in previous quarters and years. So, yeah, so that's kind of like our in a nutshell, but about probably 15 to 20, like sales qualified leads and meetings from those every month.
1
03:09
Sweet. All right. And how are you guys generating those?
5
03:13
Yeah.
2
03:14
Currently, a lot of them are referrals. So a lot of them are either word of mouth referrals, client referrals, you know, different networks we're in. That's been, to be completely honest, that's been a little bit new for us. We generally have had most of our leads, like in the last probably five-ish years, have come from kind of networks we're a part of and different marketing efforts
1
03:35
we're doing in those networks.
9
03:41
Yep.
2
03:42
And so those have just either, you know, a combination of slowing down, been over overcrowded, you know, I mean, several different variables, I would assume to those, but so kind of just this referral side of things is like, you know, not new entirely, but from what we're leaning into,
1
04:02
it's a little bit new to rely on. Yeah, okay. The ones that don't come from referrals, where are they coming from? Cold email outreach, LinkedIn?
4
04:11
Yep, cold email outreach, LinkedIn outreach and content.
2
04:16
I love that you diagnosed that well. We're starting to run some different paid approaches, primarily LinkedIn, like retargeting stuff. Yep. And then others are often from like SEO. So we write a lot of content and rank for a lot of content for our own kind of personal, I mean our own brand as well.
1
04:35
So interesting study from HubSpot about the number of meetings you're taking in a month. So they found that if you have 50 or fewer, now they do this survey, the 100,000 B2B marketers, B2B sellers, and B2B buyers every year. It's really fascinating data. And they coalesce some data from other places as well to kind of fill in some of their own. But it's HubSpot, right?
8
04:57
Obviously you're tied into them.
1
04:58
And one of the things that they talked about was if you have 50 or fewer opportunities in a month, the average business to business company will not hit their sales goals for the year. In fact, they only have about a 7% chance of hitting sales goals if they average 50 or fewer
3
05:22
in a month.
1
05:23
Now, some of those could be very ambitious sales goals, so take that for what it's worth. But to your point of like, how do you triple my opportunities in order to kind of maximize the numbers that I was hitting before,
3
05:36
there's something to that.
1
05:37
The thing that was really interesting was if you want to flip it and get 93% chance of hitting your sales goals for the year, it requires 150 or more meetings a month according to HubSpot's data, which sounds absurd, but it goes back to one of the things, Tyler, that just before we hit record here and started talking, I was doing another podcast recording with another agency owner, and we were talking through this exact same thing of like, how do I get enough opportunities that I can hire someone to do sales that's not just me? And then how do I find that person, train that person, all that stuff? So I think that you're in a spot that a lot of agencies currently find themselves in and have found themselves in the past. It's not a foreign idea to anyone. Okay, so you're generating 15 to 20 meetings that way. I know that you can get more bang for your buck as far as meetings go, if you start to deploy some new lead generation models, but we're gonna circle back to that. So before we come back to that, once you get a meeting booked, what's your process look like for closing the deal? You know, first call, second call, third call. Just walk me through kind of what that looks like.
5
06:54
Yeah.
2
06:55
So first off, I am jumping back into the sales seat because I have not been in the primary sales seat because we have had a sales team for the last couple years. There you go. And so I can talk through kind of my process and then what it has been because we're kind of experimenting, you know, a little bit right now with the current environment. So generally, you know, somebody, you know, if it's a referral and it's kind of a warm relief, they're going to reach out and they're going to instantly just kind of, they're going to book some time. So we're going to grab some time on one of our calendars, or we're going to go back and forth and iron out that date. We'll jump on a call and just kind of uncover a little, ask a couple of questions just to kind of uncover if they're even the right fit. Like, are they a large enough company that even have a budget? Do they even, are they trying to do stuff? Or are they just kind of window shopping or tire kicking, you know? So we call that, like that fit call, that first kind of section. Some prospects are gonna jump straight through fit and go straight into discovery and really kind of we can point them in the right direction. And one call and other ones are gonna jump into another call. And I would say about 50% of our opportunities are jumping straight into like a lower ticket offer. So it's gonna be like, basically for lack of a better term, we're gonna sell them some strategy right out of the gate. Yep. And it's gonna be 30 days or less to build some trust and 10 grand or less than an offer just like in that first month. Just to essentially go, hey, here's the deliverable, you know, I deal with men, that deliverable is gonna be something where we high five, chest bump, you go your separate way, or we help you implement some of it or somewhere in between, you know. So that's kind of like half of the opportunities would go into that really in that second call. So discovery, we're going to identify where you're at, and then it's going to be jump straight into a proposal from there into that lower ticket offer. And then the other side of the sales process is going to be more like that custom, like larger opportunities right out of the gate, like, hey, this is what I need. This is what we're looking for. And so that can be a couple of different calls to really identify and present what we're gonna come back with. And those are gonna be larger ticket, 30, 40, 50 grand kind of things right out of the gate in a 90 day period. So I don't know if that makes sense. It's somewhere between probably three and five phone calls on average, depending on the size of the opportunity.
8
09:13
Yeah, love that, love that.
1
09:15
Okay, so when they go through that, let's say that they do that first initial small project with you, what is the, do you know the numbers for how often those people transition to like a paying retainer client or doing a project with you guys that's bigger?
2
09:35
Yeah, it's about 80%.
1
09:37
That's amazing. Okay, so, question Tyler, why not just sell that out of the gates 99% of the times?
5
09:45
In the last probably three or four months,
2
09:49
it's shifted a lot, because I would say less people are interested in paying for strategy right now. Interesting. It's based on kind of market challenges, and they're more so just like tactically this is what we want to do, jump straight into it. So they're just less interested in paying for that like, you know, they don't want to wait 30 days to get going. These are the things they want to do right away. So those have been not as, those are more of like, hey I'm looking for a vendor and I just need someone to be like that digital yes woman, digital yes man kind of thing. And that we're more like, hey, let's build a partnership and work towards the same common goal together because we're actually gonna get there versus the tactical thing is kind of like that race to the bottom. I would say that's probably one of the main reasons is just been less and less people are interested in, oh, well, if it's gonna take 30 days to actually get a plan together, I'm not interested, I wanna start tomorrow, has been the majority of the leads that have come through in the last kind of, yeah, three to six months.
1
10:53
Do you find that clients that go through that process get better results and stick with you longer?
3
10:58
Oh yeah, 100%.
2
10:59
It's a drastic difference.
1
11:02
So I think that that's really interesting, brother, because one of the things that I've seen other agencies do with success is they go, listen, this initial engagement is, it costs X. Our best clients go through this process. Here's what I do for clients that do this process right now as opposed to just diving right into a service agreement, is I will give you a credit of half of the amount that you spent on the first three months invoices because we already did the work, or the first month, or the first six months. Whatever you wanna do to make that work for you financially, but I always make it like an incentive. I go, listen, I know that, and I would even tack into, and this is what I would say if I were you, because I see that that's your win, man. Like not only do you get some cash up front to do some strategy, it helps you have longer relationships, it's a lot more bite-sized, it's fast to deliver, your margin on it is 100%, right, because it's just time, it's not materials, am I wrong?
3
12:03
Yeah, that's correct.
1
12:05
And so then it's like one of those things where it's like, all right, hey listen, I know that you just want us to go do stuff, this is how I would say it, you don't have to say it this way, I know that you just want us to go do stuff, and I realize, look, our solution's gonna take 30 days before we even are ready to get launched, and it's going to require some time from you. And the reason why we do it that way is because our solution is superior to anybody else in the marketplace. We get better results for all of our clients that go through this process. The length of time that it takes us to get to implementing is for your benefit, not mine. I could totally take your money right now and go execute on those services. You're not going to get the results that you want, and we're never going to get to the right place. If you need that, we're probably not the best agency for you. Just telling them that, because what that will more than likely do is people go, oh damn, Tyler's just shooting straight with me.
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12:54
Like, whoa.
1
12:57
You know, and if they're like, well no, I just need somebody to tune up my website and HubSpot and I need somebody to optimize my email stuff. It's like, we can do all that, but I'm telling you, you have to go through this process, not because it's for our benefit, it's for yours. My benefit would be just to take the $15,000 retainer for the next six months and go with that. But I'm trying to get you the best results possible. So I don't know, that may be a way to switch.
2
13:22
No, that's good. Yeah, no, that's good. I think that like the pushback in some ways, being super confident in your results and in your outcomes, that you're like, no, you have to stick with the plan otherwise it's not worth doing business together
3
13:37
kind of thing.
1
13:39
Yeah man, and I've done that a lot in my agencies and it puts people on their heels a bit and some people are like, well then I don't wanna work with you. I'm like, great, thank God, like you saved us both some time here, sweet. And then other people are like, floored. They're like, wait, okay, so you'd rather lose my business if I'm not gonna go through the process that's gonna get me the best results than just take the money that I'm gonna give you, even if it's more, yeah. Well, now I seem disinterested in myself.
3
14:06
Yeah.
6
14:07
Yeah.
1
14:08
Which is what every client wants to hear, you know? So, circling back to the outreach stuff, are you getting information from a database to target different people, or how are you finding users of HubSpot?
5
14:26
Yeah, it's a couple different things.
2
14:28
Yes, yes on the database, and then on LinkedIn, we do a fair amount of outreach on LinkedIn just to get conversations started. So it's not like, we're not doing the like, hey, book time with me, I've never met you, let's go on a date, that kind of thing. It's way more of just asking questions. And the HubSpot, they've just been centered around HubSpot user groups. So we just are targeting HubSpot user groups around the country. And so there's probably, I want to say there's probably 30,000 HubSpot users inside of LinkedIn HubSpot user groups. And so we're reaching out and they have made lots of different kind of campaigns around reaching out to those. So lots of conversations get started. I think one of the things that's been hard about that offer has that it is more of a tactical, like it's great to get the conversation started, but those people that want to kind of like, hey, great, I'd love to chat about how you can like increase your ROI or whatever that is, it is way more tactical and it's less strategic because they're already in the platform. They're kind of just, hey, can you build this thing for us? And it's a lot more of like a, you know, like an ad hoc or like a break fix type of a model. Yep. So we get business from it. It's just kind of almost like it's like that reverse diamond, you know, where it's like, you know, we're in a tactical, we need to move our way back to the strategy versus the other way. And both work, it's just sometimes one of them is a little bit more time consuming than the other.
1
15:54
And I almost wonder too, Tyler, if you could like productize the strategy element, could you call it something, you know? Like, so you've branded your agency Loan for Creative, which has a feeling and a vibe to it, right? And I wonder if you sort of brand it as something that, you know, seeing the forest for the trees, or I don't, you know, like something that like, gives a perspective of zooming out so that we can zoom in. And even having an example of that for a fictitious client or something that you can throw together and be like, this is kind of the things that we deliver. I even helped another client that said, hey listen, we'll do this thing for 90 days and it's 30 grand, and within the first month, I'll come to your location, because they're an agency that works with manufacturing companies. I'll come to your location, I'll do an onsite visit for a day, I'll meet with your team. They always do that within 30 days. Sometimes it's 14 days after a signature, sometimes it's 21, whatever. And they said, you know, after I come out, before the 30 day time period, if you don't think it's a good fit, I'll give you the 10K back. 17:06
Because they're just like, listen man,
1
17:08
like I, when they take on a client, they know that it's gonna be at least $180,000 in year one. And so he's like, look, if I do this project with them and they pay me 30 grand and then I give them 15 grand back in credit over the next three invoices, who cares? And if they pay me 10 grand and I paid 700 bucks to fly to their location and stay at a hotel, I don't care. If they don't wanna work with me at that point, I don't wanna work with them either. And I wonder if there's something similar to that where you can like brand this and market it as, this is a product and we're going to look at the tactics as a part of the strategy assessment of what you guys are doing and here's the things that we would immediately implement.
3
17:51
Yeah, that's interesting.
2
17:53
Because we generally sell like our those kind of strategy packages. We've got like a customer journey map. So you know, you're essentially like mapping out for them, because most people don't have a great map of what it takes to actually go from pre-buyer to buy to afterwards even. And so we do that. That's an offer. We do a website blueprint, and then we do a HubSpot strategy. So those are three examples of those lower ticket, get in the door things. And I think it's interesting, it's like just that you're even suggesting like the shift in kind of confidence of going, no, no, this is what we're sticking to. This is how you get the best results as you jump into this. And then we know a timing, because then there's like a gazillion jumping off points from each of those that we just know so much more about their business. So.
1
18:41
Yeah, man. And I feel like it's the land and expand model, which is really lucrative for the type of agency that you're running. And dude, like, I always just go, what would you want? Would you want somebody that's like, hey man, we'll do X, Y, and Z for loan for, and you're like, cool, well I need you guys to do this. They're like, okay, we'll do that, and then you get bad results, or you want somebody to be like, hey man, I hear you, I hear you. And the reason why it'd be helpful for us to work together is we're gonna take you through this process to make sure that whatever it is we're doing, accounting, finances, whatever, we're gonna get you the best results if we take this path, even if it's more labor intensive for you in the beginning, it's gonna lead to less labor in the end, and better results. You'd be like, okay, I can suck anything up for 90 days. You know, I can suck anything up for 90 days. And so, I don't know, man, I think that you would want that, just getting a vibe for you, Tyler,
2
19:33
I'm like, this is what you would want. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think it feels like that's a pretty solid offer. I think we're just kind of in that stage right now of figuring out how to ramp up, like you said, to kind of be able to hit those sales goals having to go, hey, if we're getting 20 to, you know, 15 to 20 ops right now per month and we need to get 50 minimum, or 60 even to triple those, you know, for just our numbers, not even looking at the HubSpot study data, I think that's kind of probably where we're at now, because that's, you know, it's probably a couple hundred more leads that you're sifting through. And so that's just like pulling that lever when you've never had that. It takes quite a while to get to that spot. And so I think that's what we're experimenting with a couple things right now.
1
20:17
And I think that the way that you phrased the offer of like, hey, we're gonna come up with a tactical and strategy roadmap for you to find success with anything in your hub spot, that's gonna get people on the hook right away. If they're like, oh man, there's a money back guarantee, I also get a credit towards that. There may be just an influx in meetings, because I've seen this happen for our clients, man, at one of the agencies that I own, where we changed an offer. I'll just give a really brief story, Tyler. We had a client that was going from selling cannabis cake pops, like high-end cake pops in D.C. They wanted to expand to the California market. They went and talked to my SDR agency, and they told them, like, hey, listen, our best clients, they have an outrageous offer, you need to create one. They're like, we're just gonna give away free samples. They were booking one or two meetings a month because they were doing what everybody else does, right? And so finally, they're like, hey, we gotta get more meetings. They're like, well, you should meet with Dave and come up with an offer. So we came up with two, man. One was, hey, if someone signs on to be a wholesaler with you for the next 12 months, you'll do a co-branded billboard with them within a five mile radius of the location. The second one was, hey, we will bring a chef to your location, we'll put on an event, they won't make THC infused cake pops But they'll make cake pops on location and you can promote it to customers and say hey come hang out on Saturday We've got a chef coming in. They're making cake pops come get some
4
21:48
They went from booking one or two meetings a month
1
21:50
This is real to the month that we started running the month after we started running those new offers They booked 19 meetings a month after that We didn't change any outputs by the way the month after that they booked like 27, the month after that they booked 34. It just went gangbusters, man. And so I think that that offer tweaking is gonna be the difference between you having 15 to 20 meetings and 50 to 75 meetings every month.
3
22:15
Yeah, that's good, that's super helpful. Cool, man.
1
22:19
Well, if people wanna check out Loanfur, they wanna check out you, where can they go to do that, man?
2
22:25
Yeah, so our website, loanforcreative.com, so L-O-N-E-F-I-R like the tree, creative.com. And then I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. It's probably the best place to just engage with me and love having direct conversations with people and either, if we're able to help, awesome, but oftentimes at some point I'm in the right direction too if we're not the right fit. So love meeting new people. So appreciate your wisdom. Thanks so much. Thanks so much.
1
22:51
Thank you, Tal.