In this episode of She's Busy AF, Melissa Lohrer, a seasoned expert in business development, shares game-changing insights to redefine your agency's growth strategy. We delve into the delicate balance between scaling and sustainability, with Melissa offering personalized guidance honed from her extensive experience. From prioritizing client relationships over numbers to leveraging unconventional approaches like consults and VIP days, we explore the path to a stronger, more resilient agency model. Discover the transformative power of referral partnerships and founder-led sales, essential for fostering enduring connections in the industry. Join us for a masterclass on revolutionizing your agency into a dynamic, profitable enterprise.
Find Melissa online:
Find Lauren Loreto online:
Timestamps:
In this episode of She's Busy AF, Melissa Lohrer, a seasoned expert in business development, shares game-changing insights to redefine your agency's growth strategy. We delve into the delicate balance between scaling and sustainability, with Melissa offering personalized guidance honed from her extensive experience. From prioritizing client relationships over numbers to leveraging unconventional approaches like consults and VIP days, we explore the path to a stronger, more resilient agency model. Discover the transformative power of referral partnerships and founder-led sales, essential for fostering enduring connections in the industry. Join us for a masterclass on revolutionizing your agency into a dynamic, profitable enterprise.
Find Melissa online:
Find Lauren Loreto online:
Timestamps:
Welcome back to another episode of she's Busy AF, a podcast dedicated to helping brands, entrepreneurs and creatives smash barriers and scale. I'm your host, lauren Loretto, and we have a phenomenal guest on today, someone who I coin as one of the best people to follow on social media, especially if you are a service provider and even more especially if you are an agency owner. Her name is Melissa Lawer, and she is a business development partner for independent creative agencies planning their path to one million. What I love about Melissa is she has an entire background on business development working with agencies, so she really knows the ins and outs of how it's done on the corporate side and the rights and wrongs and all of the in between, and she's anything but your typical agency new business person, because boardrooms and blazers just really aren't her thing. So, after being 13 years on the inside, she was frustrated by a broken model that she couldn't fix, and so, as a consultant and a strategist, she works with independent agency founders to build a better business in fresh ways that deliver better results. She started her business a couple years ago or, sorry, maybe it was like a year ago and she's partnered with and impacted over 20 agency owners and counting. I am one of those. I can speak to it.
Speaker 1:I did a session with Melissa. She's absolutely incredible. She's a wealth of knowledge, and I brought her on the podcast today to talk about how all things business development, cultivating relationships, founder led sales and her beliefs around how to go about this dev and sustainable ways to do so. So I love talking with her. I've had multiple conversations with her off camera, off podcast, and so I just felt like that was really selfish of me to not bring this to you here. So I'm really excited for you to dive in today's episode and also just make sure you please check the show notes and go obsess over her on LinkedIn and Instagram, because she again really does put out incredible content that's not just what you see in the vacuum of the world of sales.
Speaker 1:So tune in and I hope you like it. Here we go. All right, welcome back to another episode of she's Busy AF. We have Melissa here. Hi, melissa. Hello, I'm Melissa. It's like the most informal welcome to the podcast ever, because we know each other. We've had lunch, you know. That's more than I can say for like half the guests that we have on the show is that we've like met in person, interacted in person and we talked about the office costs and we did life, all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it was a matter of time before you came on the show and I did put you through the application process. So, for anyone else wondering here, Melissa did apply and I was really excited to get her on. So for those of you who don't know her, she is a business development specialist. She has a wild background in the agency space. I respect her so much as an agency owner and she just has she's a wealth of knowledge. She is one of the few people I follow on social media that I actually save her posts. I come back to them, I screenshot them. I'm really pissed LinkedIn doesn't have like a save feature because you're in my. If it did, you're, it would be filled with all your posts for me. But she's really great with that out of left field perspective when it comes to business. So, at the end of all of this, definitely go follow her.
Speaker 2:Thanks.
Speaker 1:Lauren. But yeah, I mean, do you want to kind of real quick just chat about your journey to where you are right now, Like what is your background and what gives you a leg to stand on when it comes to FISDF?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my quick backstory is I've worked it with in-house at creative agencies for 13 years and a few various roles, but mostly in business development roles. And my last role in house was head of growth and I got into business development sort of accidentally. I was supporting the two co-founders of an agency on business development as like sort of a side hustle while I was an account lead and the rest is kind of history. But I now coach and consult with creative agencies on business development and I think what makes our partnership so strong is I'm not an outside consultant who doesn't know what it is on the inside of an agency.
Speaker 2:I've lived that for 13 years and I've also led business development, so I can relate a lot to the stresses and the unpredictable nature of agency, new business and what it is to run an agency and how challenging that can be for founders. But what I was ultimately seeking out when I left my agency role was a more sustainable way to do business development, a more sustainable way to run an agency, because what I was seeing were models that weren't working anymore, these agencies that were highly bloated, unprofitable and constantly in these major highs and lows of good months and really bad months and I wanted to find a better way to help agency owners sustain themselves, but also to have more women succeed in this space, with less than 1% of creative agencies being owned by women. So, yeah, that's my long story short of how I got here, but a lot of also what makes my partnership so strong with agency owners because of that background in history.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a question on a lot of people's minds mine, mine is profitability around building an agency. I think a lot of people, a lot of our listeners maybe started their business as kind of a solo person, being the one who owns the craft, knows the craft, does the craft. And now they're in this place of scaling and they're bringing on a team and so then they're starting to realize they got to do all sorts of things like manage a team and be more involved operationally, and it comes with a lot of different hats to wear. But at the end of the day, when you start scaling, that profitability really becomes something you have to keep an eye on, because it's not just you anymore or it's not just your small team. You're really growing. What are some things that you see are common issues when it comes to profitability of an agency? And like, what are some easy? Like, are there easy fixes for those things?
Speaker 2:Yes, and no. But I think you should always aim to be profitable, whether you're a one person agency, consultant or you have a big team, and I think you shouldn't scale until you're profitable. If you're not profitable as a team of one, you certainly won't be as a team of 10. And I do think that's a common misconception, like, if I have more people, we can bring on more work, and then the problem is you hire people but more work doesn't come because you haven't figured out how to get the work and how to do business development. So I think knowing the right time to scale is critical, but a lot of it comes down to you know, I see a lot of agencies undercharging their services and it just when you look at it from a formula standpoint, in terms of how many hours you have available billable to clients and what your revenue goal is. The math just doesn't math you it's the rates you're charging are requiring you to work in the evenings and on weekends to make the amount of money you want to make, and that is why you're burning out. And then what I see? But I'm not saying you, laura, I just mean you, the bigger, you, but. But then I see people patch that whole with hiring team members. Well, if I hire team members, then I don't have to work on the weekends and work late at night. Yeah, but you've just increased your expenses and increased your revenue goal. It's a problem that only gets worse as you scale if your pricing is not in the right place. That doesn't mean to say there's a blanket recommendation here just be more expensive. I think pricing is a very you have to know. You have to be aware of what is standard in your industry. You have to be aware of what your ideal clients is investing in the type of work that you do. But, that said, you can package your services in different ways to make it more profitable. Make your services more profitable Whether that's shortening the time frame that you're doing the work to make it more efficient, whether that is limiting what's included or productizing and introducing tiers in terms of what's included. But I think that is step one. If you're underpricing, you will never be profitable. It will always be an issue, no matter how big you get.
Speaker 2:Then I think the second thing that I see is the client my agency clients, who say yes to too many things. You have to get really particular about who the right fit is for you and the clients that you know you can be profitable on. So I have one client, for example, who she runs an affiliate marketing agency and she has worked with all kinds of businesses that are looking to build and grow their affiliate marketing program. But what we determined in conversations was when she's building it from scratch, there's a lot more man hours that have to go into it and her margins are virtually not there or she's in the red more often than not. But also those people don't have budgets that they're willing to pay more than that because they don't have the program standing yet. So for her it was an obvious decision let's not work with people that don't have their program built yet.
Speaker 2:You can come in later where you know you'll be profitable, where you know they will be able to invest what they need, to invest with you. So it's being able to say no to those clients that aren't a good fit for you, where you know you're not gonna be profitable or be able to do your best work and say yes to the right clients that are gonna fuel the growth of your business. But often saying no is more important. Knowing when to say no is more important than knowing when to say yes, because bad clients can literally drain your business, drain your resources, you can lose team members over it, you can lose your sanity over it. I know you know that, lauren, and so I think that's important Cricing and knowing who's not a good fit for you and who you have to turn away and potentially refer to somebody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that can be scary sometimes too, especially in seasons where leads are far in view or sales are a little scary. You're so much more inclined to say yes to projects because you're like our services or retainers or whatever, because you're like I need to sale.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there we go. Ethics can come into play there too, but like totally.
Speaker 2:But if we offer them something different that isn't your typical service, then, like a 90 minute consult or a VIP day, something where you're isolating and that's what I'm working on with one of my clients, because she does get a lot of people coming to her want to build affiliate programs, but I'm like let's have another offer for them that is not your full service monthly offer, because you're not getting the benefit from it and what you would have to charge to get the benefit is not something we are willing to pay, so it's. We need to come up with a different thing. Or, yeah, have a referral partner where you get a 10% referral fee for passing them along to someone who is better suited to you, know address what their needs are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So on that tone of referral partners, I want to pause and talk about this because actually, something you would put in my ear a few weeks ago is Lauren, hey, I think that you should probably look at talking to some fractional CMOs. I think that that's a good potential referral base for you guys, based on what you're telling me, and I was like that's really interesting. Well, sure enough, I had two calls with fractional CMOs this morning, this morning, and I was like, oh yeah, I'm actually talking to Melissa later, anyways. But I was like, yeah, you know, I wanted to come on here and just talk with you and see who your ideal clients are.
Speaker 1:And, sure enough, like one of them, her ideal client is, you know, service based businesses and I was like, yeah, so, and I was just trying to pick her brain around what are some of the common challenges that you guys have as a fractional CMO with the teams? And she's like, oh, it's, you know, when it comes to scaling and systems and processes. It's like having the right fit, the right it's building the role that they're going to need internally, but like, in the meantime, not having the support to help, and I'm like, great, we would love to be your support and I'm just finding that it's working. So, like A, like testament to your advice, always being on point. But you know, b it's, it's opened my mind and eyes to avenues of getting new business that I never really thought about. I think people, and agency owners specifically, think, okay, you got a network right, but then that's, that's, that's you know, up here in the cloud.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You have to be marketing your own business. Okay, duh, we got to show our work, we got to show what we're doing, but I think there's much not necessarily faster methods of attack, but more efficient ways to get business, and so I'd love to dive into this whole. You know cultivating new business through referrals and like why do you love it? What are your recommendations for figuring out who's a good referral partner? Yeah, give it to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean, when it comes to business development, you're right, there are those like obvious things that you just have to do that are table stakes to run a business. But I, because of my path into business development, I never sort of you know, there was no head of my department before I took on the role and I always defined my own role. It taught me to be pretty creative when it comes to business. I've never had a playbook, but I I always look for the path of least resistance. If this is my goal or my client's goal, what's the fastest way to get there? What are our quickest ins to our ideal client? And I think referral partners are a great thing. So there's a couple of things. You wanna find people that you have really good chemistry with and shared philosophies, because that will likely mean there's alignment on your ideal client. If you are talking to someone that, let's say, has a totally different approach and they're super aggressive, they're gonna attract a different type of client. So the people that get referred to you likely aren't gonna be a good fit. So you wanna find someone that you hit it off with and you have a lot of agreement on the philosophies in terms of the industry and even if they have a different lens that they bring. So for my business, I'll give an example. I work with six-figure creative agencies on their path to a million. I have a focus on women, female founders, and I mostly tend to work with women that are pretty type A. They do it all. Their moms, they are the coordinator of their friend group it's you, lauren and so when I'm thinking about referral partners for my business, I'm thinking about who else is working with my client and in what capacities, and I have a few partnerships that I've created over time where, with a fractional CFO, with a fractional COO, those are other people that are helping my clients build their businesses, that they're in the six-figure range and they're looking to scale, and those are the consultants they're bringing in. So not only am I able to get insights from them from a different lens because I'm not they're seeing things that I don't necessarily get to see in my work with my clients, so I'm learning from their side of things, but I'm also then able to, if my clients are facing challenges that I can't solve operationally, I can easily refer to somebody that they can speak to that, as we're doing the work on business development and growth, they're actually able to implement things on the operational side that make the work I'm doing more effective. So I think that's a great way to think about it. It's like who are people that are working with our ideal clients and can potentially make our work more effective?
Speaker 2:I think another approach to finding the right referral partners is thinking about complimentary service providers. So who's working with your client in a complimentary way to what you're doing? Or maybe it's a person or consultant or type of business that's working with your client before they come to you. They need to have that work done before they come to you. Or it's someone after they work with you. What is the natural next step? So for a branding agency, that could be a social media agency you do the branding work likely. They then need someone a marketing agency or a social media agency who's gonna take that foundational branding work and put it out to the world and let it start working. Or, if you're a web agency, you might wanna speak with a branding agency who's doing work before they would be coming to you. So I think it's thinking about your client's journey and what are the things they need before they come to you or after and that can make referring very easy, right? Because if someone comes to you and they don't have those pieces done, it's easy. Let me refer you to my friend, so-and-so, work with them and then come back to us in three months and we can start working together.
Speaker 2:And there's lots of different ways to do it. You can white label. If you want. You can have it referred out. There's all sorts of ways people approach referrals. But I think what's key is you really have to know who your target, your ideal client, is, and I find a lot of agencies are quite vague about it. Like I work with female founders Okay, female founders, at what stage of business and how much revenue do they have and what is their problem? Like, you need to get much more specific as an agency to really know who you're made for and who you're the best fit for. That's where you can be profitable, that's where your services can get repeatable. That's where you can be a specialist. It doesn't mean you have to specialize in an industry, but you have to be a specialist with a niche audience of some kind. So that's the key in terms of you have to start with partnering with the right people and knowing who to partner with, based on your niche.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so true. One of our best referral partners is a branding company. Like they do branding and all of that. And that's our shtick too, though, is like we will not start a project without branding. Yeah, so it goes both ways. Like we send so much. Like if people come to us and say, hey, we need branding and web design, as if it's not clear enough half the time on our website that we don't do branding. Like we're very we say we work with established brands that have branding. Those pieces are very crucial because we spend a lot of our time and energy on strategy and strategy and then development, so we can't do this back work on, like helping you identify your audience. Like we need to all of those things in order to make an engine that's gonna work for you. And it also goes back to like our beliefs If we're gonna design a website for you or run marketing campaigns for you, we need you to be very firm and have an established product. Like we prefer to work with businesses who aren't testing product products.
Speaker 2:Good, that's amazing because I know, you know other agencies, like social media agencies, who will take on a client that doesn't yet have a brand. That makes their job so much harder.
Speaker 2:We have to be creating the brand through social media and it's inconsistent and it doesn't work well and it doesn't perform because there's no like ground to stand on. So I love that you're firm about that and I think that's really smart. And, on the flip side, your branding agency referral partner probably loves that they have someone to refer their clients to after them because it makes their work shine more right, like someone's seeing their work, and the client is likely gonna get more results because they're investing in marketing. Whereas if they were to finish the branding work and it was just done, you know if, depending on the size of business, like that client might be doing their best to get the brand out, but without a marketing machine it's gonna take a lot longer. So I think there's mutual benefits to referrals. You know both ways and those are the ideal relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so okay with that. I think the next big question is, like okay, how do I like I don't have anyone like that I can like? Maybe this someone's listening or you know, you've identified who that might be. Okay. So, for example, for us, we know that those are creative branding agencies, as an example Okay, so I. Or fractional CMOs Okay, so we're going to go. Now I'm going to turn to LinkedIn. I'm going to start looking for these people In my mind. I'm going to start following them in certain places, because I think it's an authentic to send a message saying let's get on a call, like just right off the bat, right, but what is the best way to like, you know, make them aware of you, to start to nurture conversation and like transition into a phone call and then and then down to having that first conversation, without coming across like you're pitching them.
Speaker 2:Yes, totally. And these principles apply to going after clients too. Yeah, Not just, as you know, collaborators and advocates. So I think the first thing is if you can define okay, we're going after branding agencies who work with female founders who are in their first three years of business and around 500K in revenue. I'm like totally making this up. But if you have that specificity first I would turn to your network, because I'm whether you're going after new clients or in a situation like this, you always want to kind of turn to who you know first. So if there's anyone within your existing network that you can tap into, someone like me who probably knows a lot of people, I would start there. I would ask hey, do you know any branding agencies that focus on this niche? See, if you can get direct, you know recommendations through your existing connections, Then I would, and potentially in parallel, I would also search for people on LinkedIn and search for that type of agency and the keywords that we just talked about. So you might not be able to search to that level of specificity because not everyone puts that in their LinkedIn profile, but you could. I would search branding agency, female founded service provider, and you'll probably get a handful that come up, I would.
Speaker 2:My approach would be to send a connection request with a note always with a note and just say hey, I work with a similar client audience. It seems like we have some overlap. I'd love to connect if you're up for it. Very brief, you're not asking for anything, just ask to connect. I get those requests all the time and I'm happy to accept them because, hey, if they're writing content, that's speaking to my audience too and we can create visibility for each other. Great.
Speaker 2:Once they accept, I actually would directly say hey, would you be up for a coffee chat sometime? Be great to share insights about the industry and mutual experiences. I don't think that's too forward or sales-y and there's something in it for them. So keep it brief, but make it a 20 to 30 minute coffee chat and just meet them.
Speaker 2:And that's where you have to feel out is there chemistry? Do we have a similar philosophy? You can ask them more questions about who they work with to see if it does check the same boxes as the type of clients you work with. And then, once you have, I would say, three of those you don't need many, you just need three good ones Then from there, you wanna build a friendship and a relationship with that person, you wanna keep in touch with them, you want to message them occasionally, engage with their content. I have a ton of people, for an example, that are fractional CFOs, that have showed interest in having a referral partnership with me, which I'm always open to, but I have about five fractional CFOs I'm likely, if a client asks me for one.
Speaker 2:I'm likely gonna refer the person that comes top of mind, that I'm most in touch with, that I have the strongest relationship with and that most aligns with the clients I work with, because I'm not gonna refer five people to my client.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna refer one person and I'm gonna refer the person that I have the best relationship with. So I think what I see often with referral partners is people throw that out somewhat carelessly. It's like let's be a referral partner and let's keep in touch and I'll refer things your way. But you can't just say that and not continue the relationship. You have to invest in that relationship and there needs to be a mutual return if you want to be getting referrals from that person. Like any other relationship in business, you have to invest in it. So that's why I suggest only have start with only a handful two or three referral partners so you can invest time in keeping up with them and sending them an email every now and then and checking in and having catch up calls where you can exchange insights, because you can't keep up with everyone. We're all way too busy and strapped for time and it's better to invest in few and actually get results from those relationships rather than have 20 so-called referral partners that actually never results in a referral.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's so true. We've all probably got that list of referral partners that we try and maintain and it's just so long and you're so right. Yeah, especially when you're floating in and out of different networking groups and socials and it can become really, really hard. Yeah, I mean it's so funny you say this like our number one strategic partner and referral partner. Like we work on projects together and then we also refer a lot of business to each other.
Speaker 1:I'm going to see her next week in Alabama. Like we've become fast friends. Like we talk personally. She's in my top nine on my bubbles on iMessages, like she is one of my best friends. Our daughters had like the same due date and so that we connected over that, initially on Instagram, and then I obviously was like obsessed with her work and then there were just opportunities that came up to work together and we jumped on it and realized we worked well together. And yeah, I mean I know that's not going to be the case every single time either, and it's not to say you should be best friends with, like, the strategic partners you have, but like that is best case scenario for me, because we're on each other's minds all the time.
Speaker 2:Right, and yeah, it doesn't have to be. That's a huge benefit to you, because you also made a friend out of a business relationship. But I also have people that it's somewhere in between. We talk once a month. One of us will send each other an email how's it going? What are you experiencing right now? Are you seeing a lot of leads and we're able to support each other? And then there's always an ask on either side. Hey, I have a question one of my clients is facing. Is this something you could shed light on, or vice versa? And it's just about keeping in touch and having a genuine relationship.
Speaker 2:But I think one of my favorite principles for referral partners and collaborators and advocates is give before you get. If you can do something for them, you're much more likely to get something back. So promote their business in some way. Comment on one of their posts, repost a post that you really like, something they said be their stand, because if you do that for them, they will return the favor. And when you can, when you have the first opportunity to refer someone to them when the time's appropriate, do it. And when you show someone that, when you say I wanna be a referral partner and you actually mean it, they're much more likely to do the same back.
Speaker 2:And I do think there are a lot of empty promises. Not that anyone's doing it maliciously, but as business owners we network so much and I'm always telling people oh my gosh, if I can refer someone, I will. But out of sight, out of mind, like I meet sometimes upwards of 60 people a month, I don't always remember every person's specific niche and the type of thing they're looking for. So you have to kind of invest in the people that you want referrals from, because we have a lot going on. I don't have a spreadsheet where I keep a list of people and their niches and what kinds of clients they're looking for, and that would be a full-time job.
Speaker 2:So I think people take it personally if they're not getting referrals. And it's not personal. But you have to invest in it like you would invest in any other business development tactic. It takes time and you have to nurture, but if you do it well, I've received incredible referrals from my referral partners and I've given incredible referrals and those are. That's great, because when you get that kind of referral you're rarely in a competitive situation. Usually there's a trust bill and that person wants to work with you, which is half the battle in the agency space.
Speaker 1:Truly, truly, it is half the battle. It's so true. Those leads, I've noticed, are the quickest to close because they have it has like the backing of someone who's already trusted. So they're like oh you're saying that person's gonna be like very similar to working with you. Great, I'll sign tomorrow.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's amazing. I don't know, have you ever explored because it sounds like with your branding partner you were really close relationship have you ever explored with them like collaborative packages, where someone can okay, yeah, that's a great step.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a service. It's super high ticket because we should definitely revisit it together, she and I. But we called it brand and a bottle because we're both like she has the champagne-esque thing about her brand. We're brand good time, so it was like brand and a bottle and it's combining. It was basically combining branding with web in a four week timeline instead of a 12 week timeline. So it's very high ticket. It was like $10,000 or something like that and we just hadn't really actively pushed it together. But we should, we should and we will. But we also partner on projects together. So our agency does offer social, but not as a kind of core service. It's like it's within the marketing container we offer. She offers social as like a core service. Like you can hire her agency for social. She has a strategy and agency background as well, so she does branding and social and so when we come together on projects for retainer clients like her company will handle social and we'll handle like email marketing, digital web, like that side of things and consulting.
Speaker 2:That's the next step and beyond just passing the thing on. It's like can you create a strategic partnership where you're bringing your minds together to solve a problem? I wouldn't recommend going there until you have enough of a longstanding relationship. You know there's alignment. You know you work well together.
Speaker 2:That takes a little bit of time, but I have a lot of clients who have those strategic partnerships.
Speaker 2:One of my clients is a branding agency and she has a partnership with an interior design business, because a lot of the clients she works with are kind of retail brands experience driven and the interior design piece is a very natural next step.
Speaker 2:So not only is she referring them business, they're referring her business and she can also offer one package of branding plus interior design, which makes it a one stop shop for clients Without her doing services that are not her. You know sweet spot. So she's able to bring the partner in, let them own their expertise, while her agency gets to be positioned as, like you know, the best for the type of brands she works with. So I think that's a great way for an agency to extend their services without making your agency the full service. We do everything because you really want to own what you're good at as an agency, but if you have strategic partners that are amazing at what they do too and that can make you be positioned as you know, it makes it easier for the client. You can offer multiple things. That's a win-win for everyone.
Speaker 1:Totally, totally, totally. I'd like to pivot the conversation a little bit because I think something that also comes up when it comes to founders and BizDev is this founder led sales concept. So I'm sure, with your ideal audience, right, these agency owners who are scaling to a million, you know, when we first had a conversation a while ago, I think I was confused on if you came in and did BizDev for agencies or if you were a coach, right, I clarified very quickly and that was an oversight on my part, but I'd always been taught, at least in the last few years, like you hire for the things that you don't want to do, and I think for a while I didn't love sales. Now I do so like I'm okay with founder led sales, like I'd rather be the one to get on the phone call. However, there comes moments in time, like taking a maternity leave or wanting to take time off and feeling like if you close your calendar to the sales calls, you're gonna lose the leads, and so I think there's some agency owners who get appointment centers and closers.
Speaker 1:I've seen that. I've seen some agency owners who they hire someone to go and farm leads on LinkedIn. You know, like do cold outreach and stuff like that, and then they come in kind of at the end and they close the sale or whatever. But you know I've also done a lot of reading that founder led sales is not really super scalable or best practice for longterm. And I just want your thoughts on, like, how can founder led sales not completely bring down the founder too? Cause I will say personally, I'm sitting on a Google doc right now with 12 different proposals and no proposal notes that I need to send out, like this week, and it can be a lot. So how do you keep the founder and founder led sales but also able to, you know, do the other things within the business that they want to do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think there's a lot of depends because, like depends how big you are depends. You know what your end game is. Are you looking to sell your agency? What work as a founder do you enjoy most in the business?
Speaker 2:But I have a very strong philosophy, which is if you are an independent agency and you're under seven figures, I believe your best opportunity of growth is the founder playing a heavy role in sales. And if you're not good at sales, you need to get good at sales, because, and if you don't want to do sales, I would question whether you should go work for another agency so you can do the work you love and not be part of sales. In the founders job description, sales has to be part of that role unless you be, you know, become so big that that's not your responsibility. But I think in that you know in the first decade and you know if you're under seven figures, like it's part of the job. And I think there's also misconceptions on what being good at sales means, as I talked to a lot of agency founders and a lot of them feel that you have to be really good at convincing people and selling people and I think for me, sales is about relationship building, and anyone can be good at relationship building. Does it come natural to everyone? No, it certainly did not come natural to me. I am not a natural like extrovert schmoozer, like that is not my personality, but I became really good at building relationships and I think those are the best sales in the end, because even if you're good at convincing someone, if they're not fully bought in, they're not a long-term client. So I really challenge any agency founders in you know under seven figures to challenge themselves to get better at building relationships with prospective clients and closing those clients. And if that's not your strength, work with someone like me. Work with a coach who can level up your skills and get you good at it. It doesn't have to create anxiety for you, it doesn't have to be hard. It's actually pretty simple in terms of the principles that make you good at it. But, yeah, sometimes you need to learn how to do it and that's, you know, probably the thing that most people come to me for they're very uncomfortable with and they don't know how to approach business development and they're doing it in all the wrong ways, which I've done myself. So I know what works and doesn't work. So I think that's my first like response to that.
Speaker 2:Now, yes, as you scale, you have more responsibilities, your time is more limited, so I do think you can start to have someone on your team who understands your business and you that can start to assist you. Are they leading sales and business development? No, that is your role as the founder. But can they help take things off your plate, whether it's building up proposals for you? Yes, and that's what I did 13, you know, 10 years ago. I started just by helping listening on calls, taking notes, helping put proposals together and eventually I was able to pitch to clients. So it you know that's, you can start getting support and they can help you more and more.
Speaker 2:But I feel you know, having someone on your team who understands your business, your culture, is the best way to start getting assistance on that execution and the doing, versus hiring someone on the outside who's gonna DM a bunch of people. They're never gonna represent your brand in the way that you feel most comfortable with and they'll never understand who your ideal client is more than someone who has lived on the inside and understands from that perspective. And then, in terms of all the things you could do to help bring things into your pipeline. You know I talk to agencies who try all kinds of things. They buy lists, they hire lead generators. Honestly, there's very little success with that stuff and I'm always open to like hey, if someone has a success, like tell me, because I will tell my clients this person can help you actually win the right clients. But mostly what I see is poor quality leads, fickle leads, so people that might sign on but then drop you in three months because they signed on because of price or you know, it wasn't about the relationship.
Speaker 2:And I think the best agency partnerships are born from really good relationships, relationships between the team and the client, the relationships between the founder and the client. And hiring a third party to do that you're just not gonna be able to build that, those foundations upfront that will lead to a long-term successful partnership. So can you invest in those things? Yeah, is the ROI very small? Yes, and is that sort of the silver bullet people look for and try because they think that will solve their problem? Yes, and will it? No. So I have a lot of strong opinions on all this, but I've been in the industry for 14 years, so I've pretty much seen it all and while I am always open to the to something new that will make it easier for agencies, what works is kind of the old school build really good relationships method, and you know, having good processes for how you build relationships is a better investment of time than searching for things on the outside to fix the problem, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:No, it totally does make sense. It's so funny like my head just started spinning as you're saying that, because it's like okay, it's not just the outbound either. Like you know, all the time I say it is so much easier to nurture and look internally at your current contracts and grow them and increase lifetime value there, then it is. It's also cheaper that's been proven than it is to go and farm for new clients too. So it's like you know, anytime we get a rough spot with sales, I'm hesitant. I go to the website but I'm hesitant to buy lists or leads because I just know how much more work that's going to take. It's not just buy the week, close the contract. It's buy the week, close the contract and then build a relationship on top of it, whereas you can build the relationship prior. Our sales runway with some clients is six to 12 months before they actually sign on. But if we spend six to 12 months talking with them every other week, them getting our marketing, referring business and eventually, yes, it does convert.
Speaker 2:That's the reality, that people don't talk about the standard timeline in the agency space to win a new client. I wish that was talked about more because everyone's looking for the quick wins, which you're totally right. The quick wins come from existing relationships, whether it's a past client or a current client or a lead that didn't hire you because you weren't quite right for what they needed at the time. But you're completely right, that's the quick wins. Any new relationship, even if you buy a list, you're probably not going to be in a good place with that client for six months. It is what it is. If you're doing outreach in a way that you're throwing spaghetti at the wall, yeah, you're not going to get results, but that's the wrong way to do it there are ways that make it much more effective and prove to drive actual leads and build clients much faster.
Speaker 2:But you have to know how to go about it. You have to, ideally, work with someone who's been there, has tried different things, but a lot of agencies are just because the agency owner, their strength and skill set, is a creative of some kind. They're not sales and biz dev is not their strength. They didn't get into business because they were good at biz dev. They got into business because they were really good at their craft, so you're not expected to be good at it.
Speaker 2:But instead of just trying a bunch of things until you find the thing that works, which could take you five to 10 years, why not just either work with someone who can level up your skills quickly and give you? Here are the three things. Here is how you can make this approach easier and better and get better ROI. Or invest your own time in training yourself, whether it's like reading books or podcasts, or but yeah, I think you're going to get. You're going to overwhelm yourself with the different. There's so many different things you could do to get business and any of them is viable and a lot of some of them work. For some agencies. Some work don't work for others. I think it's going to it's knowing what works for you and knowing how to use that tactic successfully. That is the best way to do it.
Speaker 1:Totally Well. On that note, I know you said the way to accelerate things would be to work with someone like you or someone who lives in Breeze this, so I'd love to end on you know, please tell everyone how they can find you and work with you. What are the different ways?
Speaker 2:So awesome. Yes, you can find me on my website, waverlyavcom, or on Instagram, waverlyavconsulting, or on LinkedIn under Melissa Lohr, and I coach. I also consult and do lots of things in between advising, but I'm always open to talking to agency founders who are struggling with business, regardless of if you're my ideal client or if you're looking for someone. But I love kind of hearing experiences and being able to advocate for women in this space and help make business development more approachable to people who've resisted. So so, yeah, that's. That's kind of how to work with me.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you give a wealth of not I'm going to repeat it a wealth of knowledge on your social channels. So, like everyone, go follow her and all the places and you I don't excuse me if I'm not supposed to tell this, but every now and then you also drop these like incredible coffee chats where it's very limited availability on your calendar but you'll get on a free call and, again, wealth of knowledge. So, seriously, I mean, from you and I did a consult and I had so many ideas and then we did like a one-off engagement and you gave me a lot of stuff that put a lot of momentum in place for my business. So, yeah, I mean I can totally attest to the amazingness that is Melissa. So if you are struggling with this, to have it all, please go reach out to her.
Speaker 2:Right back at you, lauren, regarding marketing and any needs support on marketing. Like I know how much you care about not only your team but your clients and the pride you have in the work you do and that is. You know, not everyone is that thoughtful about their business and I admire that so much about you and always love chatting with you. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for being on the podcast today and thank you everyone for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please give it. It's not a thumbs up because we're not on YouTube. Please rate the show. Give me those five stars. Say all the things you love about it. It helps us reach more people just like you. That being said, we'll see you on the next episode.