Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Ali Newton Temperley. Ally is a sales expert and agency growth consultant who has helped scale agencies to 80 plus employees and global reach. So she understands the struggles that agencies face in hiring, structuring and even trusting a sales team, and what's better is that she knows how to fix them, and that's the exact reason why I wanted to have her on the show. So many agency owners get stuck in foundry led sales, and that makes it nearly impossible for them to scale. Ali breaks down. How do we transition away from this? When to hire and how to ensure your sales team is set up for success? In this episode, we discuss why most agencies fail at hiring and structuring a sales team, how to extract a founder's sales knowledge and transfer it to a team the right time to bring in a sales hire, and how to set them up for success and more. No one was asking for another community, but I've made one anyway. So what's different the dynamic agency community is designed around access, rather than content, access to peers who've done it before, access to experts who've designed solutions, access to resources that have been battle tested. And right now, the price for founding members is only $97 a year. Join today so your agency has immediate access to everything you need to grow. You can join at Dynamic agency dot community, and now please welcome Allie Newton Temperley, it's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forwarding. What's the biggest mistake that agencies make when structuring their sales team?

Speaker 1 1:55
This is such an interesting one. I think as founders, we tend to get a little bit lost with all of the information that we figured out along the way. We've had so many opportunities to speak to lots of different people, try and figure out different angles, see what works and what doesn't, and then we get this gift of a new salesperson. We think they look great. We're excited to have them. We explain the service, we explain the price and expect magic, but we miss this kind of whole middle piece, which is the bit where we figured all this stuff out and we understood our product. We made a mission, we figured out, you know, what differentiates us from other agencies, what our competitors are doing, all of this middle piece can kind of get missed, and I think that's something I see repeat itself in lots of different agencies, and they bring in someone to help with the new biz, and it doesn't work, and that kind of gets pushed onto it wasn't the right person, or wasn't the right time, or the market's not right or any of these things. But actually, if we don't have that kind of core structure for them to come into and a way of extracting that information out of the founders brain and putting it into the new persons? Yeah, we're not setting them up for success,

Chris DuBois 3:25
right? I think there's like this. So founder led sales has this almost like a stat boost, like if you were playing a video game or something, right? Where it's like you can go into a sales conversation, and as a founder, it's like, there's a way better chance you're going to be able to close that deal, and it's for all the things you just meant, like, you know it better, right? You've been through all of these things. You got the reps. But also you you can change the deal like you're, you're the founder. So who's gonna tell you, No, we can't restructure that. And so it's like, it's definitely, yeah, I think something that gets mislooked that, yeah, there's all of these other things that have happened that have led to you being really good at this. Is there a point, I guess, like, and this might be a hard one to answer, so apologies in advance, if, if it is. But the is there a point, I guess, in a like an agency's lifespan, where the they know they're going at some point in the future, start hiring sales, so they should start documenting. Now, is that hard to point out?

Speaker 1 4:27
No, this is such a good point. And so this is, I did this whole journey with a with a global agency. We we built the first sales team for them for exactly this route, and the founder needed to go and do the things only he could do. He needed to be kind of extracted. So we have to build all this system out underneath him. And trying to extract all of that knowledge was almost impossible. So rather than asking him to kind of sit down. And figure out, what is it that you're doing? We took a couple of different approaches. So I guess my suggestion would be, rather than trying to document this stuff, would be just trying to understand it orbit yourself and get kind of a self awareness about it. But then ask someone who's good at looking at this stuff and pulling it apart and putting it into building blocks to try and extract it for you. Because quite often, the other piece to this, which I think is incredibly hard to translate, is if your founder will have one personality, they will deal with things in a certain way, and they will have a code of how they see sales. You know, their their code might be, you always recommend the best thing for the client, no matter what or it might be. We always pitch the highest profit service. You know, there are, there are different ethics that can kind of sit below it. So as long as we get the code out of the founder and we understand how that's filled the rest of it, we can fill in in a different way, because we need to be able to plug in people with different personalities and still allow them the flexibility to be able to sell to the best of their ability, without those constraints. So I think it's having kind of guardrails that are inflexible, that's the code, and then a process that actually is quite flexible and and you brought up a great point, Arnold, you mentioned about, you know, founder walks in, they can change the deal. Our sales people should be able to do that as well, if we give them the right guardrails. And so often, I think that's that's missing, and the the sales team are kind of rattling around, hoping for the best, going back, trying to get approval, waiting for that person's come out the meeting all this time, the deal is losing its energy, right? But if we can empower them in the first place, then we can just skip all of that.

Chris DuBois 7:09
So how much does that come down through the founder just not trusting the sales team because they've been so self reliant, you know, for the entire period of growing their business.

Speaker 1 7:21
There definitely is some of that. And I think this is the case, whether it's it's the founder or someone else who's coming in, and maybe it's an MD who's coming to help relieve the founders and this stuff, because there isn't always as much visibility over a pipeline as we would like, and even if you have all the CRM, the systems, the processes, the notes, you still can never quite get the amount of information that person has on that lead and why they've left it that extra day, because there's a board meeting, whatever it is, so that, yeah, you're Absolutely right. There has to be that trust there. But also something I found can work really well, is to agree, you know, I mentioned this kind of code earlier, is to agree a set of principles around what good looks like. But to do that not just top down from, you know, the founder or the head of sales, whoever it is, but to actually involve the team in that and to ask them what they think is reasonable and what they think will get the deal done, and you get this tension that comes up between the different team members, and it's so healthy. It's such a good tension to start producing, because they actually push each other along. And once you've got those standards, they will hold each other accountable to them. And actually, the leader doesn't have to do it all, because they'll be saying, Hey, Ben, you know, where was this and and it starts to become a bit more of a living thing that you stop having to pour pressure into, and instead just get to put energy into, which is, it results in a lot of your sleepless nights, especially, right?

Chris DuBois 9:14
Okay, so you brought up a great point that I haven't considered where so something that I we we did a lot when I was running an agency was we would look at a process and really just focus in on like, what does done look like? What is that, that ultimate end state? But I think even just reframing it to what does good look like? So rather than just pay what is that final end state, where, I think a lot of people might say, closed deal, right? That's what good looks like, or what done looks like. What good looks like is making sure we hit all of these steps and these beats within the sales process. I think that simple reframe is probably super empowering for team members to be able to know, hey, I'm doing the things right. So as long as I keep on this path, I should be able to get this result. I. Think that's that's awesome. So I guess I want to go back to the trust based. I thought of something else while you were you're talking, is there a way to say I'm an agency founder and I am not trusting that this is the best approach to take, like, I know I need sales, but it's like, but I've been doing the sales. Is there a way to, like, slow roll the process out so that trust is less of a blocker, where maybe I'm still involved in sales a bit, but I have some people doing certain types of deals, like, is there? What recommendations do you have for around that?

Speaker 1 10:34
I've seen a couple of different ways of approaching this, and I think to some extent it kind of depends on the founders personality and preferences. And I've seen situations where the founder will still kind of take the lead on the presenting, but they'll have someone who's doing a lot of the preparation of the materials. They're doing a lot of the kind of competitor analysis type walkthroughs, and they're kind of taking on bits of the presentation, they sort of slowly dial it over as the founder kind of gains trust. I've seen others where they say, You know what, I can't look at it. This person to just have a go, and if they start selling stuff, then it's working. And I'm not sure if there's a right answer. I think the difficulty is at some point you have to let someone fly, and if you just kind of keep coming in above them or chipping in, they lose the space to grow into, whereas it's what you buy, tends find, if you raise your expectations of someone and step back. They tend to step into it, so long as you didn't go too wild and suddenly expected them to do something completely out there. But a lot of times they they will step into it, and they'll do better because of it, because they'll care so much about the thing.

Chris DuBois 11:56
Yeah, sales is one of those positions that's that's worse to micromanage in, I guess, like every you can micromanage in any position, like with sales. It's like, generally, there's some commission based structure. And it's like, if now my salary is based off my output, but you're going to tell me exactly what I have to do. It's like, why are we even structured like this? And so, yeah, that's a good point. So I guess maybe I jumped ahead earlier. But so are there? Is there a point where the agency should hire sales or you're like, Hey, you are at the point where it's like you were the bottleneck. Let's, you know, bring on a sales team. I

Speaker 1 12:35
mean, you've hit the nail. IPad, if they're the bottleneck, then what have you been doing? You can't be kind of limiting everybody else in the company for that. I think it's also one of these decisions where ideally you want to be making that decision before you're forced to make the decision if you are able to start growing someone into that role, even if they're not currently doing it full time. You know, maybe they're currently in client services, or they're just one of your strategists who's particularly great, and you can start kind of bringing them into that role and teaching them a head off when you actually need to start making some of the handoffs, then that's a really good opportunity. The big piece that I would always kind of put up as a bit of a flag here is that if you don't have the leads, don't do it. You're setting yourself up for having to let someone go, or having to change someone's role drastically, or send them into a life without bound that they might not be ready for. That there can be a tendency to think, if we increase the number of sales, people will make more sales. Then it doesn't quite work like that,

Chris DuBois 13:54
especially given that most marketing agencies don't do a ton of their own marketing to make sure they have leads coming in. So I guess, in your experience, have you seen a lot of or have you seen more? I guess agency sales reps who are like, just outbound driven versus taking the inbound leads and being able to work those do that. Like, are Is there a difference I get? Like, are they coming in with certain things in mind of what the position would look like.

Speaker 1 14:21
So I think I would pass myself as an inbound girl like that's very much kind of my uh, approach to the world, um, particularly when it comes to agencies. I think it's particularly strong if you're attracting your own business through what you're saying when that said, as you already mentioned, it's a couple of shoes effects. No one's doing their own marketing because they're too busy doing everyone else's but I do think it tends to be a stronger position to be approaching it from, and I think there are. Often, there's often a big temptation, discovery, super nerdy now, so I apologize in advance. Can be a big temptation for us to focus on the places where the results come out, rather than what's actually causing the symptoms. So you mentioned earlier, you know we would class done as being when the sale comes through, rather than kind of, what does great look like during that process? And I think that's I see that a lot that very kind of common way to approach it. But actually, if we start to think about the marketing and sales process as being one living being that has to work together as a set of these two separate things. We tend to think the problem is the pricing wasn't good enough. The pricing was wrong. Or if we're really having a bad day, we might say that the lead was never going to be a good fit, and it's just never the right thing, right? But, but actually, those are the symptoms. And if we can kind of dig below the surface a little bit more typically, what starts to move the needle is, Does the agency actually have a point of differentiation? It can't be. Our team's really good, because everyone says that, you know, has to be something that actually means something. Is there a good call to action? And I think speaking with clients, they're kind of a bit circle the get in touch approach. They want to be able to see a little bit of the value ahead of time. Them to, you know, have a why you right? Discovery calls that. Don't discover anything. They're not getting to the root of why now, why us? What's the actual problem? Is there a problem? And what are you going to do if you don't do this? And then all of that then leads the proposal and whether it works or not. But so when we're kind of looking at inbound versus outbound and how to structure the sales team and when to hand over from the founder, I think those are the building blocks that have to actually be in place, but often they're the ones that we struggle to get to because they're not as clearly, I guess, or no, or have a value attached to them, or, you know, they're much less tangible, but they're, they're the ones I'd be focusing on,

Chris DuBois 17:37
right? So one of the concepts that I've I've been working with all of my clients now I'm calling the permissionless demo, where it's the idea, and you kind of just reference it of do the things that you're good at to attract the clients, and because then you can actually show them, like, yes, we're an ADS agency. I just attracted you with ads. And that's super powerful when you get in the sales conversation. Of you know that experience you just had? Well, I'm gonna do that for you, but for your clients, they're gonna get same experience, like it worked on you, and now it's like, you have, it's like a this super weapon for conversation where it's like, like they want to stay in congruence with the way they're already thinking, right? And so, yeah, it works out. So I'm not sure why more agencies aren't just doing that for their own marketing. When all of my clients who have been doing it are those conversations are like, the sales cycle is like, no time, right? It's so easy. But then, if you now, if we're going to, like, create a sales process, right? I'm going to bring sales reps in the ability to just give them that, that ability to use those super weapons, right? In this it just seems seems like a no brainer. But yes, there's a lot of things that seem like no brainers from the outside and but okay, you mentioned the being able to, like, kind of be proactive with your your hiring process, right? And no one something else that I don't know. I see it in a lot of other businesses, but I haven't seen it a lot in the agency space, of being able to say when we meet these conditions that tells us to do, take this action. And so I guess what. And we kind of got through it on on, like, no, if you're the bottleneck for the business, yeah, it's time to hire. Are there other conditions within the business that I guess you would set as we need to hire? Like, once we hit these it is time to bring on a sales team.

Speaker 1 19:39
That's a really good question. You've made me think of something else, but let's come back to that environment. Maybe we can talk about gap plans at some point. But yeah, the so if the founders bottleneck, then 100% that's that's a clear signal. I think we've also touched on another thing here, which is around the age. To zone marketing. If the leads are the bottleneck, some allocation has to come somewhere, from somewhere to start working on that. And a lot of times it's kind of carved out of people who've got a bit of spare utilization hanging around. And maybe they can do a blog this month. That's, that's an okay system, but it's very difficult to do anything kind of ground breaking with that. It's, you know, you're going to struggle to be like, hey, maybe we need to launch this new service, or we need to try this type of audit, or this product. Or someone has to have time to do that, and if the founder is doing all the sales, it becomes difficult for them to be able to look up and further ahead, because they are so busy keeping on top of the needs that they have. And I think if that starts to become a danger point, then that's another good sign that help is needed. It needn't be even someone full time necessarily, but it just needs to be someone who can take on some of the follow up potentially, and just begin taking on some of that sales stuff, so that the founder has the opportunity to look ahead, but also that marketing has to be done. And as we've said so commonly, it isn't. Agencies are so good at being able to tell other businesses, hey, you need a point of differentiation your USP doesn't count the CTAs rubbish. They know this stuff, but we don't do it. I think, yeah, that's that's another sure sign that something needs changing up to be less focused on just the delivery awesome.

Chris DuBois 21:44
So I want to kind of shift gears into now actually hiring an agency, finding the right people, bringing them in, and setting the right structure for for that team. I guess. Where do you start? Do you go in with the plan? Do you go in with just finding a couple like so one of the pieces of advice I've always gotten was never hired just one sales rep always have two, because they love that competitive thing. And then if one doesn't work out, you got a backup, I guess. What are your recommended recommendations for starting that? Oh my gosh,

Speaker 1 22:16
I enjoy this process so much. It's kind of smiling, but, yeah, I really enjoy this. And this was a, this was a big thing I did free agency called Exposure Ninja. We've got their first sales team. It was a huge move for them, because we were to release their founder. And it for me, it was all about finding the right type of person, as opposed to the knowledge that they had. Some of the people that I've hired into these types of roles actually haven't had a sales background. And I think this is always a this is always an interesting conversation. Do you hire for marketing, or do you hire for sales because they're selling marketing, so you sort of want that vibrate of information. I've done both, and I still don't have a preference. I think it's more about getting the right person. And there are a couple of things I do to try and do that. So the first one is, in the advert, I'd be really clear that this person needs to be motivated. They need to be self starter, and they need to be excited about what they're doing. We're looking for people with energy in the interview process. I don't know if this is me or not, but it is really useful, which is, towards the end of the interview, I would typically say, Okay, now is the opportunity for me to express any concerns I have about you, and at the moment I'm seeing and then just express a couple of you know, any concerns I have genuinely and see how, see How they react to it, if it's kind of okay, that's probably not going to work. If it's a really aggressive objection handle, that's going to be tricky too. But if I get some objection handling, and hey, I really would like to learn more about that, that's something I'll look into. I'll read up about that, or those types of reactions that let me know that they're coachable game on, because we can figure out all the other stuff, everything else can be done if they're coachable, and they can work together with someone that has the time and energy to actually help them. So that one, I think, is, is kind of the main thing, the other one I might ask them to do is video demo, because you soon figure out how good they are at presenting, if you think you can get them comfortable,

Chris DuBois 24:52
right? Yeah, I've that objection piece. I've done that with like, marketing. And stuff. But I never thought of like, the next level is, with a sales hire, you're literally giving them a chance to show their skills in the first sales. It's like, that's, I don't know that you can give a salesperson a better test than to sell themselves.

Speaker 1 25:16
It's a bit kinder than being like, okay, Sell me this panel. Why should I hire you? But it kind of, it gives them the opportunity to actually demonstrate, rather than say, Oh, I'm, I'm very good at taking preaching advice, and I'll necessarily do it. Yeah.

Chris DuBois 25:41
So I'd heard, I think, Neil Patel was being interviewed about how he grows his agency so fast. And one of the tips he gave was he that he actually hires salespeople from potential clients, like at bigger levels, not like the direct clients. So like, if he wants to get into Tiktok advertising. He finds all the companies that are advertising on Tiktok, but then he goes and hires one of the Tiktok sales reps who already has a relationship with all of them, so that when they come to the agency, it's much easier to make that in obviously, when you got a lot of cash, you can throw around for hire. But are there any places I guess you would go actually look like, rather than just doing a job posting, but actually go like, hunt down, like, great sales reps. Is there somewhere that you've had you've seen agencies have a good fortune?

Speaker 1 26:31
This is a really good question. I mean, my go to is just LinkedIn. I think that's probably similar for a lot of people, but if they are, it's how they're using it, and are they doing it well? And can they position themselves in the right way? If it's just hammering the same you should buy my stuff, then there's, there's more work to be done there. But if it's, you know, they're positioning themselves, they're having bit of fun with it. It's interesting, but they're still getting that point across. Then I think that's great. Um, for me, it really does come down as coachability. I've had people almost straight out of uni, and they've been incredibly successful. It's, it's very much down to the mindset and approachability for me, more than I think anything else. Cheers.

Chris DuBois 27:28
Yeah. I can second that motion. I guess when you're looking at like commission structure too, have you found a good is there a good base pay that gets them all in. Does it fluctuate based off what they're selling?

Speaker 1 27:44
This is so interesting. So I think it depends on the agency. To some extent, I've seen some agencies do really well with just base pay and and that's not typically how I would work. I would usually be recommending some sort of commissions queue. But I think it depends on if you've got inbound leads, outbound leads, if you are able to actually give them tools that they need, or you're really expecting them to just be able to pick the thing up and fly on your own. And I think your experience does come into it when it comes to that base pay, I would usually want someone to be earning well, but definitely needing that commission supplement, because we know that that helps to keep them motivated. It helps to keep them pushing, but it does need to be a balance, I think, particularly if you are currently at a stage where you're seeing a lot of fluctuation, if you have very bouncy months, as opposed to, you know, some of those kind of steady leads coming in, then your sales person is going to really struggle. If that's your kind of lifestyle, right?

Chris DuBois 29:01
I've always wondered on commission structure, because so if we get a good sales rep the and this is kind of true across any any industry or any position, so like a marketer can for an agency can go make way more working for a tech company, because the tech company has awesome margins, right? And it's so much easier to throw a little more cash at someone to get them in the door with a sales rep. It's, it's almost the same thing, right? I can go work for, you know, big tech company and get an awesome commission payout, but that agency can only pay me out so much on commission because the margins are already so tight. And so I guess that's been one of my questions, like, Should I go with just the higher base pay, and have that consistent knowing that so I can actually do my numbers as an agency owner right and understand what I'm going to be making, or go on the commission side, make sure they're motivated and and know that our profit margin is going to drop on a lot of these projects. You know? Yeah, it's a, probably a balance there.

Speaker 1 30:01
Yeah, I think it's a balance. There's also a big culture piece to that as well. I think if they are happy, they know they could be earning more elsewhere, but actually they just love this so much, then you can keep them for a long time. And in some ways, I've never been afraid of them wanting to earn more and move somewhere bigger is, if that's their path, I'm not going to block them. And, you know, I would rather we help them perform as best they can where they are right up until they go somewhere else, than to, you know, be holding them back so we don't have to try and find that extra money somewhere. Yeah, right.

Chris DuBois 30:44
Yeah, there's definitely, I've been rereading Ogilvy on advertising, and one of the so he brought it up. But then also, there's a chapter where he just goes into all of the the big advertising geniuses that came before him and ran the biggest companies, and the one thread of advice that all of them give is bring in great team members and then treat them really well. And think, to credit what you're saying, it's like, yeah, up until the day you leave, I'm going to treat you awesome and even, right, even if we're parting ways on not the best terms, and treat you awesome and stuff, because it sends a message to everybody else too. So, yeah, well, Ali, this has been an awesome conversation. Very insightful. You've answered a bunch of the questions that I've just had about this entire sales process, how to start a team and stuff. I got two more questions for you as we wrap up. The first being, what book you recommend every agency owner should read?

Speaker 1 31:35
Okay, so, a really strong one that I recommend to owners, but also to anyone on your team, literally anyone on your team, is radical candor. It gets some bad press sometimes, but I think it's generally by people who have not read the book and have used it as license to be rude to people. That's not what it's about at all. It's about getting the best results by sharing how you genuinely care while being honest with people, and it's applicable to clients, team members. Just

Chris DuBois 32:08
awesome. And last question, Where can people find you?

Speaker 1 32:13
Agency, growthpad.com, or on LinkedIn. I'm temporary.

Chris DuBois 32:19
Awesome. All right. Well, Ally, thanks for joining. This is great. Thanks so much. That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review, or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.

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