Agency Forward

Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone, today I'm joined by Dan Englander. Dan is the founder of sales schema and a consultant helping agencies grow through outbound systems. He's the author of relationship sales at scale, and has helped over 100 agencies go beyond referrals using proactive outreach and trust based selling. I wanted to have Dan on because too many agency owners rely on passive referrals, and Dan chose how to build a system that actively fills the pipeline. In this episode, we discuss how to build a Referral Engine that actually scales why most outbound fails, and how to fix it, how to find trust shortcuts in your outreach 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 a dynamic agency dot community And now Dan Englander. 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 agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. What is the biggest mistake that agencies make with outreach? Yeah, really

Speaker 1 1:36
great question. I mean, I think a lot of it is being self centered, right? And focusing on here are our wins. Here's all the great things we've done, as opposed to the prospect and what they're up against and these sorts of things. And I think that there's this kind of, like blinders on mentality, because a lot of the times, the agency knows that there might be creating really strong campaigns for their clients that like are focused entirely on their client's customer, but they don't see the forest from the trees for themselves, right? Which is a common thing. So that's probably the biggest mistake. And I think the thing that makes that harder, it's not that the agency is always narcissistic or can't ever turn that off. I think a lot of the times there is humility, but the thing that stops that is real, real lack of clarity about who their ideal client is, right? Because the agency might be spread between too many different verticals. What I find is, even if there, there is specialization, like even if you do have one vertical that you focused on for years, it's a continuous effort to understand that vertical and understand, like, really, like sharpening, what are they up against? What's going on right now? How have things changed? Like, that's already enough with just one, much less, like five, for which you've done 10 different things. So those are a few things that come to mind for mistakes. Yeah,

Chris DuBois 2:58
I'm wondering too, with the kind of self serving side of this, most marketing agencies are great at marketing for our can't say that a lot of marketing agencies are great at marketing for their clients, but yeah, when it comes to marketing for yourselves, it's really hard. The I wonder though, how much is it this, like we have this desire to just like, look, I can help you. Here's exactly how I can help you. Like, look at it, and it's just like, What? What is it that gets us doing that? Yeah, it's a

Speaker 1 3:30
great question, um, and I've done that too. Like, we've had many messed up campaigns as we had good ones. And like, whenever I've gone wrong, and usually when it fails, it's like, because I start going crazy with, here's all the great stuff we can do here. Here's how awesome we are. And, like, I'm pretty sure we can help here. The issue is, I think the reason, I'm not sure why we do that, you know, there's probably, like, a lot of genetic and evolutionary reasons, but I think the All I can say is, like, the dynamic that has changed, that in my my estimation, is this thing called the trust recession, right, which I talk about, I didn't invent that word. A lot of people are talking about it, but it's the idea that, like, we went from a situation, and I might get too far into history and other stuff, where the scarce resource was information, like you hear about the information age, right? That was like, whatever, the end of the 20th century, let's say, and passed it into the 2000s and so on, where you know you had things like the parity of information between buyers and sellers kind of reach this equilibrium. So if, like, you're a buyer going to buy a car, you have the blue books and you know about it. And same, same thing applies to B to B. So now we're sort of past that age, and there's so much information about everything that that's no longer the scarce resource. It's really trust, right? It's this idea that, like, okay, there's, there's a lot of agencies out there. I you know, you say you can do these things. Why not even, why should I buy from you? But why should I talk to you right now? Why should I risk having my time wasted, or maybe risk getting, like, pushed into something that I later. Read whatever that is. So if you're thinking about it from the standpoint of trust being the scarce resource that really should affect the copy you write and the outreach that you put out there, right? So I'll stop blabbering for a second, but that's a few things that come to mind.

Chris DuBois 5:15
No, that's great. I sent you a question meant for a psychologist and and you took a great, direction with it. So I agree, the something that, like inbound marketing, was really big on, on pushing, was, like educating your audience. But the thing now is, like, education is there. It's everywhere, right? It's like freely, you can go to chat, GBT, ask any question, you're going to find all the resources you need. And so really it comes down to who builds trust the fastest. And so exactly what you're saying is, I'm seeing it in in my day to day work with agencies and so,

Speaker 1 5:49
right? And I think that, like this might be a clumsy metaphor, but it's almost like, AI is this giant juicer that's like, squeezing the last drops of juice out of like, the value of information alone, right? And then it's like, you're not going to out compete that. So, yeah, so, I mean, a lot a lot of, like, what we're helping our clients with is really figuring out, like, what's inherently scarce, and then leveraging that systematically, you know, so a lot of the so a lot of the times that's looking at things like commonalities, it's looking at referrals, but doing it in a way that is proactive and systematic. So, you know, does each individual campaign scale? No, but the system overall does and is repeatable and so on. Yeah,

Chris DuBois 6:31
yeah. So when it comes to outreach, where I think there is a bigger trust gap that needs to be crossed in order for anyone to be able to reach out to anyone and have them actually believe you're there to help them, not just, you know, sell them something off the bat. How are you helping your clients with actually bridging that gap? It's

Speaker 1 6:55
really good question, so I'll definitely get into that to do a quick sidebar on this kind of, like, inbound versus outbound kind of thing, I think that the lines are getting pretty blurry between those things. If you're talking about like, Hey, I'm getting on Instagram or I'm getting on a LinkedIn, I'm having my intention hijacked for 15 minutes, and then there's this lead magnet that I barely remember signing up for, and now I'm on a list. I I don't know that that's a world away from, you know, a person, a salesperson or an owner that has built a very deliberately crafted list, and send somebody either content or, like a request for a call or something with personalized, kind of commonality, driven outreach, like and then you have a lot of situations where, you know, you have people that have gotten onto your list, but you're proactively making them an offer to, like, get on a call or tend to webinar or something like this. So, you know, I'm a big believer that all marketing is interruption marketing. I love Seth Godin. I love him to death. I don't agree with this permission marketing thing, because permission involves always interrupting somebody. It would be great if we had products that were so dynamic and amazing that all of our business only came through organic referrals. But we live in the real world, right? And we're not all MIT Tech billionaires, so, so this is so anyway, I wanted to say that that like I think a lot of the times people draw these lines between inbound and outbound. I think that we're all playing the same game at this point, more or less. But to answer your question about like, tactically, how we're thinking about it. So first, the way that most people are thinking about this is taking the lessons from, like, tech companies, from software companies that have said, Hey, here's the way to do outbound. You have this infinite kind of cold model. Everything's super automated. Automation is great. We do a lot of it, but it's kind of like scaling to the Moon using increasingly, like, kind of AI based personalization. I think the issue with that is we all kind of see it coming from a mile away, and our BS walls are getting higher as AI becomes more ubiquitous. So what we're looking to do with outbound is really look at like, Where does the low hanging fruit live already, and how can we pick that for as long as possible and then keep it kind of expanding the low hanging fruit, basically. So what that means in the first 90 days with clients? For most clients were built, we were implementing a program we call the Referral Engine. So what that means is like looking at connections, figuring out who you would already ask for a referral, mapping who they know, into into accounts that you want to reach, and then going from a situation where you're like, Hey, do you know anyone? To Hey, I saw you might know these specific people. Would you feel comfortable making intros and then sending templates to make the intros as easy as possible. So it's not, it's not the most typical, traditional outbound play, but it is outbound and it is leverage. So that's the most common thing. And then from there, when we're getting into more like colder style, leveraged campaigns, the sort of stuff that is fully automated, we are going cold some. Times, but as much as possible, we're using commonalities. So it's like, okay, you want to reach CMOs and fintech companies between X and Y size. We could just go after all of them, all at once, or we could find the ones that are in Portland. Maine, hey, it looks like there's like, 50 people you'd want to talk to you in Portland. Maine, maybe not Portland, but like a different let's say, Yeah, trade show in Atlanta in three months. Like, there's 100 people there. Let's start with them, right? Because they're going to be more likely to talk to you and not know. Almost nobody's sending them that message. That's like, we work with companies just like yours. You can see our website that says it, I'm going to be in Atlanta for this conference. Like, let's start there. And then, if you keep do, and then once you kind of start thinking in this way, there's dozens, hundreds of ways to implement these campaigns over and over again. So that's the kind of way we're thinking about it.

Chris DuBois 10:49
Gotcha so, like, you brought up being able to target, like, an event that's coming up, and being able to say, hey, like, we have this, we're all going there. Like, what other types of, I guess, commonalities are you able to find so that you can do this without needing to travel, without needing, you know, I guess, to leverage different events and things like that.

Speaker 1 11:06
Yeah, really good question. So you don't necessarily have to be getting on planes all the time to make this work. The whole point is that you're short cutting the trust gap, like you're getting into like hot air balloon and hopping over it, as opposed to, like, climbing, you know, through a canyon. Sorry, my metaphors don't always hit, but anyway, I'm here for it, yeah, so, like, even just knowing about a key industry event and thinking about going, or saying you might go, or saying, like, I'm going to be there, or whatever can be enough is already like a cut above what is in 99% of people's inboxes, right? Because everybody's just trying to regurgitate publicly available information. Versus like, Hey, we're in the cybersecurity space. You know, are you gonna be at this big cybersecurity event? Hopefully we can chat then, doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be at it. Or you might say, like, I'm thinking of going. There's a lot of different ways to do this, and that's just one example, but geographies alone can get us really far by, like, finding that balance between the person, but putting commonalities and scale, basically another one that we've done in the past, which is definitely a smaller scale campaign, but just to give an example, is like, a relevant company campaign. So, like, agencies, you know, so much of the time it's like, we get business because we have friends that are CMOS. They like, bounce around, they take us with them, and then, like, the opposite end of the sword happens as well. And you lose these clients that can play out really well if you actually think of that dynamic deliberately, with like, Okay, who do we, you know, who can we find that used to work for one of our biggest clients, or used to work for a company I used to work for, or used to work for a partner of ours. And then, if you're cross referencing, that ended the accounts that you want to reach now you might have a campaign of like, 50 people that would take the call with you, because it's like you're in their world. So a lot of this trust building is like, really, kind of like sending, you know, getting, giving people this feeling they're like, Okay, this person's in my tribe. I'm probably going to encounter them in the future, and we probably know a lot of the same people, and not manufacturing that, but really, like making it happen in a way that's this leveraged, if that makes sense,

Chris DuBois 13:16
yeah. So interestingly, I actually got an email this morning from a SaaS tool I'm subscribed to that just said, Hey, our CEO is going to be in, excuse me, in New York on these dates. If you're in New York or around there and you want to meet up for coffee, you know, just reply, we'll set it up. And I'm not going to be in New York anywhere near that. But now that you're bringing this up, it's like, I'm rethinking about that email and being like, Man, if I was in New York, though, there's a good chance I'd probably take that meeting just just because of, like, the serendipity of like that happening. It's like, oh, it's interesting. Like, let's go.

Speaker 1 13:52
Yeah, and I'm glad you brought that up, because, like, when, when we go through our copy training, a big concept is timeliness, right? And we hear timeliness, it's sort of like we think of fake urgency and, like, exploding offers and all this stuff. But really, timeliness can be very subtle. And I think that in B to B, like, subtlety is usually what we're doing. It's not this loud screaming siren and like, Hey, we're, I'm going to be in the city as an example. That I think another reason that the example you brought up is good is it's very honest. Like, although, like, we're making a message that feels one to one, even though we're sending it to a lot of people, it's directionally honest, right? We're not lying. We're not doing any tactics. One the negative version or the evil version of the message you described is one that I see a lot, which is like, I'm trying to describe it the right way, but it's like the message will say, hey, like, I was just in conversation with our CEO over lunch, and your name came up and like, here's the thread. And it's like, every Why would that happen in what universe would you be talking about me over lunch with their CEO? It's like these little but everyone just sees it coming and then, you know, so it's. Editors, to be honest, because it's a lot less energy in the long run, aside from the ethical stuff, yeah,

Chris DuBois 15:05
the, I get those all the time for podcasting, yeah, just the Hey, I loved your show, like, I think this person would be awesome to be on it. And I just got, I mean, I archive them immediately. But recently, there was someone who I've been seeing her on LinkedIn, good content. I'm like, Oh, I shouldn't once I have some some spots, I should have invite her on. But then a PR agency reached out using that same type of messaging on her behalf. And I'm like, don't want to, like, I'm still probably going to invite her on directly, but I'm not going through that PR agency because it's just such a disingenuine, like, way to go about it. I don't, yeah,

Speaker 1 15:40
and what I find is, I, we get hit up by probably, like, I don't know, 30 of those a week or something. And there's like, I forgot the name. I wish I could wrap them better, but there's like, one that does it really well, and it's obviously a form letter. And maybe they personalize, like the name of our show, but they don't say anything, like, love the episode with this, it's just, here's who it is. There's a one cheater with, like, their name, face, background, and the quality of the guests are good. And it's like, that's, that's good enough, you know?

Chris DuBois 16:09
So they're not breaking any trust, right? Like,

Speaker 1 16:13
nice to have that, even if we don't pick everybody. It's nice to have that in the inbox, right? So, right. This is kind of a sidebar, but a lot of the times, people will say this or that is dead, like email is dead. It's like, no, email is not dead. It's still where we go to make plans and do business like that was one example, Hey, I still want this in my inbox. It's just, you know, just doing it better. And right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that was one

Chris DuBois 16:39
of the things I wanted to get into. Like, what is like, what is like, what's working and what's dead in 2025 but I guess to what you're saying, it's like, not nothing is fully dead. It's just people are not using them and with the best strategies and tactics to actually make it work. Yeah. And I'm

Speaker 1 16:59
always like, hesitant. I think whenever you hear X, Y, Z is dead, it's like, you're looking at click bait. You know? Well, their

Chris DuBois 17:06
solution is usually the alternative. So it's like, yeah, this is dead. You should come check this out.

Speaker 1 17:11
Yeah, exactly. So you always, always have to be skeptical there. But no, I mean, like, email is not dead. It's been going strong since the 70s. It's still where we go to make plans and do business has, I think the main thing that's changed as there, there's a higher degree of barrier to entry for it, right? And that's because of the technology. It's because of what goes into setting up the right infrastructure for deliverability and with large language models, you know, internet service providers like, like Google and Microsoft are making it harder for the messages to get through. So there's kind of this, this kind of like issue where the spammers are just going to keep adjusting to that, and they're still going to get their messages through, because that's all they that's all they do. They can just keep playing the cat and mouse game. But for your average, like, white hat person, like, you know, an agency that wants to contact their few 1000 prospects tastefully, there's just more that has to be done. Is it worth it? I think it still is worth it, because everything's hard, like building anything that's repeatable and that you can keep doing is hard if you want to do ads. Well, you talk to most ad experts, they'll tell you that, you know, cost per click have gone up, and that's gotten harder, and that, in general, getting attention is harder than it was in the past, right? So it's just kind of what game you want to play. And I think for B to B email still makes a lot of sense. Yeah,

Chris DuBois 18:36
yeah. There's a mindset shift, I think that, like in this in our current times where everybody wants things very fast. It's like to look at marketing and say, we just need whatever's gonna get us leads in the door, right, fill the pipeline. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's gonna take time. Like, no matter what you're doing, there is going like, effort that has to go in in order to create this system so that it works. Yeah,

Speaker 1 18:58
exactly. And I might have lost your question a little bit, because I think you asked about, about you asked about about tactics and kind of like, what's worked and what hasn't worked. So I think that there's stuff that works with transactional products and big scaled markets that doesn't work as well with, like, complex services, ie agency services. And I think this is one of the biggest voids we're looking to fill in the market. Is that, I don't know what percent, like, a huge percentage, of sales tactical advice is based on, like, the software industry, really, what's worked for them. You can go all the way back to like this, the predictable, predictable revenue model like Aaron Ross, stuff that now has been, you know, challenged, I think, a lot, which was like the idea of, hey, I'm gonna go hire this. BDR, they're gonna go pound the pavement, dial for dollars, hit up people over email, give me some meetings, and then we'll have an account executive close them. I think that's tough, because in a consultative sales, so much of getting on the phone is about like the information, the learning you're going to get, the relationship you're going to build, as opposed to, like, a product driven sale, which is so much about. About, you know, what the product's doing, and also, like, the downside risk is so small to a lot of these software products versus, like, an agency thing that is going to affect your career, you know, could get you fired if you hire the wrong agency and so on. So a lot of it, you know, a lot of it comes down to, you know, getting away from, like, the massive amount of scale and the cold stuff, the fake AI based personalization and again, getting back to some of the stuff I talked to earlier, like the commonalities, the trust referral based stuff and so on, the stuff that's not going to go out of there's not going to go out of style anytime soon, no matter what how the technology changes. Yeah.

Chris DuBois 20:41
So as you're looking to, like, help a client fill in their pipeline, you're gonna start outreach. Is there a specific area that you focus on first?

Speaker 1 20:52
Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think a lot of the stuff, like, everybody wants to get to, like, the slick tactics and the software and stuff and that we get there sooner, soon enough, but there's more foundational things that we have to make sure are there before we can even work with people. And I think the first one, like, before we even sign on, is just like, what do they want to accomplish? Like that? You know, people say they want to grow. Like, what's behind that? Are you looking to sell this in a few years? Are you looking to scale and open up more offices? Why? You know, because, like, all this stuff is gonna take time, energy, effort, et cetera. So, like, really, that's the kind of start with why thing. Then it's who, like, who's actually going to be running this and who's gonna be doing it. We, like, recently, we've really adapted, like, the RACI framework, which our ACI is a responsible, accountable, you know, people know that consultant informed, I think a big issue is people putting way too many cooks in the kitchen, or worse, having this kind of sales as a hobby. We'll have this partner deal with this, this other partner deal with that. We're doing when we have time. What we want to figure out is like, what happens not when you have an empty pipeline? Like, we know what happens then you freak out and you want more, more leads. What happens when you win the next three clients, right? And you need to onboard them? Are you going to be able to keep prospecting and keep this machine running? And for a lot of lot of agencies, the answer is no, right? And that's where they screw up. And it's the 3090, days after that happens that we run into trouble. So a lot of it is like, time blocking, figuring out who's doing what, getting motivation from there. The next building block is clarity. Like, really, like, who are we going after? Like, what? And thinking about it from the prospect standpoint, how do they self identify? Because that's how we're going to build campaigns. So the agency may provide the exact same service to banks and fintech or between, you know, retailers and beverage companies, but that's, you know, the problems that those individual prospects have, and the idiosyncrasies between those ideal client profiles are going to be completely different, right? Like a FinTech growth stage CMO is, has culturally different, has a million different bag of problems compared to, like an institutional bank CMO, right? So that's going to inform how we build campaigns. And we need to iron out who those groups are going to be first. And ideally, there's niching. Isn't the only way, but for most of our clients, it's about going from, you know, a grab bag of these ICPs towards, like, one over time, and then once those things are there, then we're building company lists. We're building, you know, referral strategy, which I can get into if we have time, and building these scaled outreach campaigns through commonalities and so on, and getting them running in the background, yeah?

Chris DuBois 23:32
So I guess I'd love to dive into figuring out the commonalities more. Like, yeah, what are, you know, your ICP, right? You know, generally, who you're targeting, what are you looking for in order to find those kind of levers that you can pull, in order to show someone like, Hey, we're we're similar, yeah.

Speaker 1 23:50
I mean, the fact is, like, it doesn't always have to be the most amazing thing in the world if you can sort of stack them up, like it's sort of like the the sum is more than its parts, kind of dynamic. So if you are decently, if you're getting towards being specialized or niched, and you can and like a lot of this is playing out in the copy and the sort of pain points or dynamics that you're identifying. So for example, like, I have a campaign going right now to owners and agency leaders in the New York area. Is it the most compelling commonality in the world that we're in New York? No, there's, like, tons of agency people here. But if I can combine that with, hey, like, we help agencies get beyond reactive referrals and build these repeatable systems. Also, like I saw, we're both in New York, I'm in Forest Hills. Now, that's a message that's harder to ignore. And that's, like, literally, the message we've, you know, made millions on over the years kind of thing. So if you can keep doing the version of that, even just GEOS, can get us really far, if you're combining that with stuff that's very meaningful to the vertical and so on. You know, others like I talked about, events can go really well. Well, a lot of the a lot of the times, these are things that the agency is doing anyway. They're just not building campaigns around them. So more and more like, what we're looking to help agencies do is not, like, invent something that's completely new that they've never done before. It's really just kind of adding fuel to, like, what's already there. So like, if you're especially like, if you're already going to events, you should be setting up meetings, you know, before, during and after it. Like the events, really, just kind of this, like, hub and this, like reason to talk more than anything else, I think I talked about, like, you know, previous clients, or past, past clients and that kind of thing. And then, you know, huge part of this, like, really, this can keep the agency busy for a year or more, and then continuously from there is, is the Referral Engine. I think that's probably the shortest path to revenue is, like, it does take more, like, deliberate time looking at who knows who, and then getting specific referrals. So there's, like, a few things that come to mind, yeah, yeah.

Chris DuBois 25:56
Let's, let's dive into the Referral Engine. Yeah, yeah. Cool. So,

Speaker 1 26:00
so just to frame it out a little bit, most agencies get all their business for referrals. I know referrals are good. The issue is they're reactive. Most agencies are just waiting for them to happen. The ones that are a little bit better but not good enough, will have a situation like they meet somebody at a conference or networking, or a happy client, and then they'll go and say, Hey, do you know anyone who fits this criteria, sometimes it'll work, usually it doesn't. And the reason it doesn't isn't always because people don't want to help us. It's because there's a lot of homework we're giving somebody. If I say, Hey, Chris, I want to meet for you, it's different because, you know, tons of agencies is not a good example. But if I met somebody that, you know, at a conference, I said, Hey, I want to meet agency owners between X and Y who have this problem. That person then has to go scan their Rolodex, understand what we do well enough, write a message, make the stars align, and it just doesn't happen. So what we want to do is basically get to a situation where you're asking for a specific referral. So what this involves is like, first we go through the beginning of our program, which is like building the helping our clients build the company lists and get really deliberate about who they want to meet through, you know, a somewhat technical process, but it's not that crazy. We're basically figuring out. We're basically doing relationship mapping, so we have our clients first identify the people that they already are connected to, who they would feel comfortable asking for a referral. So this is where, like, we've seen other like tech products and systems try to, like, automate this, and it usually kind of breaks down, because most of us don't want to just, like, spam our Rolodex and, like, hit up anybody for referral a because it feels awkward. But also, like, it often just doesn't work because, you know, it's like digging for gold all over the place, as opposed to, like, where the gold's actually likely to be. So what this involves is, like, getting momentum. So you're like, here's everybody that I actually know and will would feel comfortable asking. So what we found is that for most of us, this is anywhere from about like, two to 15% let's say, of our LinkedIn connections. So that might not sound like a lot, but if you have, like, you know, over 1000s, 1000s of connections, this is a great starting place. And then we map from those people who are the ones that actually have a decent number of connections to the prospects that we want to meet. So probably people's eyes will bleed if I get into, like, the technical setup, but we use Sales Navigator. We have a process in Sales Navigator for doing this, and then you're like, okay, so Chris is connected to 20 people that I would want to meet. We should, I would feel comfortable asking Chris. I'd feel comfortable helping Chris. We should probably get on a call and talk through this. Then we have scripts in the system for making it easy and for, you know, making the intros happen. So what I see this as, is this completely automated? No, is this going to take time and effort? Yes, but this is the new version of dialing for dollars. Like, this is a new direct control thing that you can do that's leveraged and uses trust to get referred into the right account. So, like, I'm doing this and I'm basically getting on like, two or three connector calls a week. Each one of those calls can result in, like, anywhere between like one and four referrals into the right accounts. So if you can budget that amount of time to make that happen, this can be completely game changing, because you're going from, do you know anybody to here? Are specific people? Do you know them? And by the way, this is all like, no pressure, like, Would you feel comfortable making an intro so we could be a future resource? And here's an email that you can use. So I blabbered a whole lot. Hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if there's three

Chris DuBois 29:32
questions I want to, like, add potential color that might help some agencies. One of the exercises that I do, especially with the smaller agencies I'm working with, is we set at the start, all right, what's your actual growth goal? Like, what are we aiming for? And I've created this little Excel thing that basically put in what your current MRR is, and then what your target is, and it's going to tell you how much you need to make, like, for an additional net new revenue. Two every month, factoring in churn everything and for most agencies like the actual revenue that they need to be gaining every month is in the single digit 1000s, right? It's not a lot of money to be able to hit your your far out targets, yeah. So when you bring up being able to leverage your referrals potentially get on a call, have four potential referrals made on that, even if you only close one of those in a month like that, could check the box for your net new revenue, so that at the end of the year, you're hitting your targets. And so if you can turn this into a system, and just like every month, you're at least getting that one referral through this, which feels pretty reasonable, yeah, it's like, why would you not just take this approach on top of doing, like, your regular marketing and everything, but, like, create that system to actually leverage referrals in a way that's more deliberate, rather than just praying someone else is going to send someone your way? Yeah,

Speaker 1 30:52
exactly. And this is why it's become our starting point for like, 90% of cases, is it's it's not a world away from what the agency is already doing. It's just done more proactively, right? Done more deliberately, for

Chris DuBois 31:05
sure? Yeah, yeah, I think so. It was a word stream study from a couple years ago, but they said 60% of agency prospects are coming in from referrals, and like, for me, that's terrifying, because it's like more than half your business is something you have no control over. But what if you did actually take control of that, right? Like, through the the deliberate outreach? Yeah, completely changed the game.

Speaker 1 31:29
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And it is like all the technology is there to really get that insight over, like, where, where you should be focusing your energy. It's just about putting it together the right way. And a lot of these tools like, you know, as a side, like LinkedIn, I don't think has done the best job making that easy on people, which ostensibly is what it's for. You know, there's just too much clutter, in my opinion.

Chris DuBois 31:55
So what's the 8020 here? If you had to give that one task, one big Domino, I guess that everyone can get outsized results from I think,

Unknown Speaker 32:07
people clarity, trust, I'll give three, sure,

Chris DuBois 32:10
yeah, yeah. I mean, there's way more than that. So when we talk 20% you're probably still, yeah, it's

Speaker 1 32:16
tough to narrow down to one. But yeah, people clarity, trust in that order, Yep.

Chris DuBois 32:21
Awesome. All right. Well, Dan, I got two more questions for you. Yeah. First one, what book you recommend every agency owner should read? Oh, man,

Speaker 1 32:31
that's, that's great. I have a couple ideas. I always go back to the War of Art. I like it a lot. It's all about, like, the resistance. So if you haven't read that, you got it back there. I'm reading it right now. It's, it's timeless. It's really great, that one's great. I think for sales specifically, I like the Challenger sale. It's by a couple a few people with CB, or whatever they're called. Now, I think it's kind of like a spiritual sequel to SPIN Selling. It's just a good consultative sales model. It's more about like this, take this, teach tailor, take control framework, which I think is a really good framework for the post information age, right? Where people, like, know, a lot of stuff that's more about, like, perspective and leading people a little bit without being forced, you know, pushy or whatever. Yeah, those the first two. And then shamelessly, my own book, relationship sales at scale, which is about our whole manifesto and how to think about the stuff and so on. Yep, awesome.

Chris DuBois 33:23
All right. And last question, Where can people find

Speaker 1 33:26
you? Yeah, a bunch of different places. I think sales schema.com is our site. If you want to check out the book, it's just sales schema.com/book and it's right there. Best place.

Speaker 2 33:35
Awesome. All right. Dan, thanks for joining. Chris. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Great questions. A lot of

Chris DuBois 33:42
fun. You. 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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