Azhar Siddiqui 

Hi, everyone, this is Azhar Siddiqui. co-founder, I like the word co-founder at RepStack. And with me today is Jeff Fisher, our chief growth officer, both of us come from a Digital Marketing background, I've been running my agency in Calgary, Canada for the last 13 years. And RepStack is kind of like a brainchild out of those experiences running a digital marketing agency for the last 13 years and all the ups and downs that we all go through. And, you know, kind of learn from those, and continue to grow. And, you know, RepStack kind of came out of that, and, you know, the three key roles, and, you know, it wasn't just me, who kind of, you know, a lot of things went in my experience in digital marketing agencies. And, you know, the coaches I work with, Jeff used to be one of my coaches, and Jeff introduced himself in a little bit here as well. And, and then, you know, and then also the co-founders that we have in place over here, each one of us brings a different thing to the table. But the basics of why RepStack came into being and why we're strictly working with digital marketing agency owners, like you guys, is that, you know, as agency owners, we are, you know, wearing three special hats, like we have these teams in the background, who are taking care of our fulfillment, you know, web development is taken care of, we're doing amazing marketing strategies for our clients, we got people, we got teams and players who are doing all of this good stuff for us. But usually what we end up doing as the leaders inside these agencies, especially if you're not at a million-dollar annual revenue right now is the Marketing Assistant, the Sales Assistant, and the account management. So these three positions, we are usually as digital marketing agency owners, we're stuck in and we're stuck in a vicious circle. And RepStack kind of came into place to help the digital marketing agency owner, step back from the day-to-day and activate massive growth inside your agency. By placing these three key roles inside your agency, strategically, depending on where you are in your journey, you start with a Marketing Assistant, Sales Assistant, Account Manager, or you know, all three at the same time. So we'll get back today, today's topic is focused on the Sales Assistant, and what that person can do for you, and how that person can like get that sales activity going. the lifeblood of our agencies, going eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, 160 hours a month for you guys. But before we take a deep dive into it, I'll like to kind of pass the mic over to Jeff and Jeff, maybe if you want to quickly introduce yourself.

Jeff Fisher 

Yeah, Jeff Fisher, I'm the Chief Operating Officer for diverse recruiting experts. I'm the chief growth Officer here at RepStack. The reason I got so excited and got involved with RepStack was as a digital marketing coach for three years, every time the question was asked the position we've constantly recommended with some kind of Assistant to the owner of the business, call it a Virtual Assistant associate. I don't care what the label is, but somebody to help with the day-to-day workload that an owner typically has when you're a smaller business. And so as RepStack developed and identified the three positions that we talked about today, it made complete sense. As Azhar said, you know, we've got the SEO guys, we've got the content writers, we've got all those folks that are delivering for our clients, but who's helping us get the workload done, and so RepStack came from that. And I'm excited to be here to share in this journey, and learn more about sales assistance today.

Azhar Siddiqui 

Excellent. Thanks, Jeff. It's an honor to have you as a part of our team. Our growing team was at 135 people at this time. And it's been just an amazing journey, coming from you know, the digital marketing agency background and now helping out other agency owners like myself to get to that million-dollar mark, and above.
So today's topic that I picked out is the hiring of a Sales Assistant. So you know, I've been, I've been thinking about this where, you know, in my, during my agency days, pardon the intrusion, guys, I have a lot of family at home these days.

During my agency days, what used to happen was that you know, I'd go from the Marketing Assistant, being a Marketing Assistant, do the marketing activity, drum up some business, whether by sending out some cold emails, whether by going to my chamber of commerce, just getting involved in doing whatever it took to get some business in, and then went into the sales salesperson had put that hat on, and started doing the sales, Sales Assistant type activity. So what this involved was taking up my database of clients, like five 600 people, 700 people, and just started calling these people up, and, you know, called 1020 people a day. And that usually was enough activity for me to drum up some business, or close those deals, and then, you know, forget about the sales activity, because now I have to onboard these clients, I have to take care of these clients. And then, you know, it went back to marketing. So that circle just never stopped. Until, you know, I hired a Sales Assistant for myself. And, you know, we have quite a few Sales Assistants working with other digital marketing agency owners right now. And, and the key point here is that, you know, just imagine having this Sales Assistant in place, who's doing this activity for you 80 hours of eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, and 160 hours a month, because you know, you and I can do that for sure, maybe you're a pro at sales. And you know, you love doing that. But still, that daily sales grind, you know, making those 80 to 100 120 phone calls a day, following up with people who said that call me this week, that week, and things like that. We're entrepreneurs. And you know, we're usually I love you know, the chaos, I love going from marketing to sales too, you know, different things. But we definitely need these solid people who are just specializing in these roles and doing these day-to-day activities for us. So that, you know, the sales pipeline, always, always, always stays full. And that's why the Sales Assistant is such a huge and such an important role for us digital marketing agency owners, and we've prepared an entire workbook for you guys. Mashood (Marketing Director at RepStack), let's get that workbook posted in the link. And if you guys are watching this, as a rerun, we'll make sure that it's a part of your package as well. So I'm going to share my screen over here. And we'll start out by seeing what we've kind of put together this checklist to make sure that, you know, do you guys even need a salesperson right now because you might be very early on inside your digital marketing agency journey right now. And you may not need it, so you won't have access to this workbook as well, guys, I think it's like 14 or 15 pages, some amazing material in there. Go through it. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff here. So the first thing that we want to go through here is this checklist that, you know, that will kind of walk you through if you check three, at least three points over here, that means that you're ready to go and you're ready to hire a salesperson. So a Sales Assistant. But before we jump into that, why do we need these people again, so just to reiterate, it frees up time by letting you step back from the day-to-day activities. Sales Assistants can perform your core activities. Sales is definitely a core activity, which we're stuck doing. When you don't enjoy sales. And sometimes, you know, it's just like all hands on deck, and you just have to do that. So, having somebody doing this for you full time all the time, it's going to be such a great blessing. Trust me on that. reduce costs. So you know, there are different ways of looking at this as a digital marketing agency owner. So just to give you an example here, if you're doing a good give you a rundown of the math, say if you're doing 300 $350,000 in annual revenue inside your digital marketing agency, and you're paying yourself between 120, 150 I know that digital marketing suite margin so $120-$150,000 a year, which is a good income for you to take but really, you know, you're a glorified Marketing Assistant, a Sales Assistant and Account Manager, that's all you're doing. Because we're, we're going through these vicious circles, we're taking care of our clients, we're doing this, this sales activity, and we're doing this marketing activity. So just imagine if you could step back by placing somebody between $20 and $30,000 a year in this role, you're actually ending up saving a ton of money there. So, you know, instead of paying yourself $150,000, you're putting some of that money over to this person, and this person actually starts getting the sales engine rolling for you on a consistent basis. And it actually ends up saving you money. So, reducing cost is definitely a big plus over here, quickly scale your business. So you're at a point, you know, where you're at six figures right now, a Sales Assistant is the perfect person that you guys need to hire at this point. So that you can easily and quickly scale that operation for you. Because remember what I just said, you know, we're going to be doing this activity for a little bit, as long as we start closing some deals, we're going to be moving on to do account management and, and the sales tax activity usually comes to a dead stop. So if you want to quickly scale your business, to a million dollars, and plus, then go get yourself a Sales Assistant, strengthen your weak area. So you know, I know, I used to be like this. I'm an introvert by nature, I had to learn sales by working at Best Buy Canada for seven years. And until I did that, I couldn't start my digital marketing agency. So you know, not every one of us is great at marketing and Account Management at sales. So you know, maybe you do enjoy sales, but you know, pull yourself to a little bit of a higher level, get the help you need so that this day-to-day activity can happen for you on a regular basis. Jeff is there anything that I'm missing here in terms of why or the benefits of a cow as a Sales Assistant for...

Guest Speaker

I have a question before that? So from day one, when do you suggest that if someone hires a Sales Assistant, how long does it take from that point to for them that you say since you started making calls, and then also start closing deals? You know, so there's always got a learning curve? So what is that? Usually? You know, as far as your understanding goes? 

Azhar Siddiqui 

Yeah, so we'd like to answer the questions towards the end of the webinar. But I'll quickly answer this one, it definitely depends on where you are at with your agency journey. So if you do have processes in place, if you have a well-qualified lead list, and you've been running down, you have a process in place where if somebody comes in, you can put that person in that seat immediately. The results are usually really, really fast. But if it's going to be complete, like you're going to be reinventing the wheel.

Or, you know, if it's going to be a new process, or you haven't managed people, then obviously, it's going to be a bit of a longer-term process. We've had clients who've put in a Marketing Assistant in place, and within months, they're booking discovery calls, they're closing deals, and things like that. And we've had other clients who it took between 60 to 90 days to get to the same point. So it really depends on the journey of your agency where you're at. And if you guys can hold on to your questions, I'm going to open up for questions towards the end of the webinar. And we'll get to more of you guys towards the end. So yeah, so sorry, Jeff, or back to you. Is there anything I'm missing in terms of the benefits of hiring a Sales Assistant?

Jeff Fisher 

No, I think the biggest one you've covered but it's peace of mind that somebody is working on this every day while you're as busy as the entrepreneur, stomping out fires doing all the things that entrepreneurs do. It's so nice at the end of the week to know that a certain number of emails actually went out. Now we thought about a number of emails but a certain number actually went out the door.

You know, a certain number of leads came in, say somebody signed up on your website, and there's actually somebody on your team now that grabs that information, calls them back, gets some on the salesperson's calendar, you know all of those steps in the process right now. I mean, you set it well, you're jumping around from all these different things. And think about it. I'm sure everyone on this call has had. man, you got a great lead on Monday and didn't finally get back to them until Friday because you forgot. Quite honestly, you know, you just got it done for whatever reason. And so now you went from a hot lead that could be worth 20 to $50,000. If you close the deal, now it's a cold lead, and they've already hired somebody else. So I think that peace of mind is the biggest thing.

Athar Siddiqui 

Awesome. Yeah, that's some great insight. Jeff, thanks so much for that. And yeah, exactly like what Jeff said, Peace of mind is huge here. Because, you know, instead of, and I've been there, I'm sure some of you have been there as well. Like, as soon as you know, you think that, okay, the new month is coming around the corner, and I need to do $20-30 $40,000 in sales to keep the lights open. You know, you're back to that sales activity again. So imagine just having this person full-time in place, doing that activity day in and day out for you guys and not missing out on opportunities. So well said, Jeff. So this is the checklist that we prepared for you guys. And just some basic stuff here. Are you making at least $10,000? In monthly agency revenue? Do you have at least two full-time employees? That's good, because including yourself? That's fine. You may have a co-founder, and you may have a web developer, or SEO person, as long as you have two full-time employees. I think that's a checkmark right there. Do you want to hire a full-time employee? without, you know, long-term contracts, W-2 et cetera? Are you interested in hiring a paid advertisement specialist? This one kind of doesn't relate to you, but it's more of a Marketing Assistant? Are you looking for an agency sales rep, who can close five-figure deals? So funny thing over here, the reason we have this is that a lot of these people that you place inside your agency as sales, rep Sales Assistants, as they work with you, and they understand everything inside and out about your hiring process, or your agency services and the type of clients you guys deal with. Eventually, you can promote these people from within over to actually closing the deals for you as well. We have that happening inside our organization. And we have clients who are actually doing that where you know, who hired a sales Sales Assistant, but they're moving into the sales manager role where they close out five-figure deals for their clients easily. So if you go through this checklist, it's a part of the workbook over here, and you click at least three of these, I think you're ready to hire a Sales Assistant for yourself. The link for the checklist is over here. And the next slide, appointment setters sales rep. What's the position overview? So over here, we've kinda, you know, given out what this person would be doing, the appointment setter is responsible for proactively setting sales appointments for the Director of Business Development, which maybe you may be your partner, or you have a Director of Business Development at this point. And there'll be booking appointments for you guys. This is done by following up with inbound leads and reaching out to your prospect list by calling emailing, texting, and social messaging. So you know, the days of cold calling, just cold calling these sales reps, the person that you're going, that we are recommending that you put in place is not that one-trick pony that's just going to pound away on the phones, it's going to be a big part of their day to day stuff that they're doing for you. But they're going to be multitasking on sending out emails for follow-up. They're going to be inside your CRM so that they can send out SMS as emails. And then they may be using your social media profiles or their own to send out messages on messenger, Facebook, Linked In, Instagram, and things like that. So you know, we need omnipresence, and a person like this can definitely take care of that for you. So a couple of pointers here on their position overview. 

All calls are recommended to be initiated via your CRM. We use high level a lot of our clients use high level, HubSpot is another good one. The reason we want you to do that is so that there's an accurate log of activity. And there's a process in place for your salesperson so that you know when they come in, they're not disorganized. They know what they need to achieve today, for them to go through those 80 to 120 phone calls. It needs to be strictly organized, and CRM is going to help you do that. Each call message should have an outcome noted in your CRM, and schedule appointments will be set using a calendar link and your VA or your Sales Assistant should be able to set this up for you. We got a sample job post that we use for hiring, you guys are welcome to use this, and just post this on whichever channel and we're going to talk about some of the options available to you guys for hiring this person, feel free to use this and you guys should be able to bring in the right type of person as well. And this is the text over here for that position as well.