We made millions with our agency - Avoid these mistakes

0:00Jack Frimston:We've done it. We're here.

0:03Zac Thompson:Can you believe it? It's four years of Wham. Four years of Wham. Where has the bloody time gone? What I want to do is I just want to rewind, look at the first YouTube video and go, God, those guys look less grey, younger, but they look happier now and that's most important.

0:22Jack Frimston:That's the big thing that I actually do notice, you know, we're going to get into some lessons learned and stuff. but the big thing that I notice is when I look at old pictures, I might have been miserable, but before I start this business, I look very young. I look very young. And actually, like, a little bit chubbier as well, like happy and chubby and was probably like... You've got a great beard these days. The beard is... I think I had a better beard. I think I had a better beard. We get it in the comments a lot.

0:46Zac Thompson:People say, I love that beard. DM me where you got it from.

0:50Jack Frimston:Well, pop it in the comments, guys. If you're enjoying the beard at this level, let me know if you'd like more beard. I can provide. anyway so the theme of this episode i was wondering jack how best to sort of relay it we've done these before it's like just talking about a year gone by we've done it at different different milestones of the business but actually i thought ai what could ai do right so i said to chat gpt gp gpt i said here's a milestone financially that uh we have a meeting it has hit looking from the outside what are five things that you think we solved this year? What are you spotting that's five things that we solved?

1:30Jack Frimston:Okay.

1:31Zac Thompson:Okay.

1:31Jack Frimston:And we'll reveal the milestone at the end financially, shall we? We won't reveal it up front, but I'm probably sure the title might reveal it.

1:37Zac Thompson:The thumbnail will probably say these guys did something stupid. Let's see what it says.

1:42Jack Frimston:Okay. Right. So problem number one was no one sees you as an expert, just another agency. so if you were to predict what chat gpt noticed about how we solve that problem what would you

1:56Zac Thompson:say it noticed uh so i'm trying to predict what chat gpt said that we yeah so the problem it

2:04Jack Frimston:spotted was that no one saw us as an expert we were probably just seen as just another agency

2:09Zac Thompson:well all right this is quite a fun guessing game it's keeping me on my toes i would say it's got to be this is the year that we release the book it's the year we release the book exactly sales is therapy available everywhere on amazon so when you think about the actually let's start off with

2:25Jack Frimston:the book right so a lot of people probably this is on a on a bucket list of things to do what do you think has been the reality of writing and releasing the book i think you could i think most

2:38Zac Thompson:people could write a book but i think a lot of people probably rush like rush the process of that we wrote a book i remember writing the original when i was in the flat and i i've not lived there for about two years like so that and i know we've released it this year but like it was about three three and a half years ago that we started we wrote something i've still got the file with all of our chapters in it and you look back and go oh that is not where we've ended up oh you've still got it the original the original the original it's completely different it's bad it's bad baby and then we just kept doubling down and doubling down i think that you need to like with anything in life when it comes to sales if you want to release a book or you want to write a book you've got to stick to the process and the process is i'm gonna do the bit that probably i don't fancy doing at the end of the working day because from i mean you're you might disagree but the book writing time always came on the weekends or in the evenings or the early mornings it was never being like right okay i blocked out three hours of the working day that was agency stuff that was firefighting that was team stuff or whatever it was but just building that muscle of i know i need to write i know i need to go back over it what what things did you learn from writing the book so i like this idea right i first i first actually heard it from an mma fighter on the joe rogan podcast years ago

4:03Jack Frimston:and he was asking about how do you think about workouts yeah he's like do you work out twice a day whatever it is like a lot of MMA fighters do and he was like I work out when I'm excited about it that's when I do it so I'm not running on a you know just just like a random like a running on red he's like when I'm excited about working out I work out yeah and then I heard I think from Naval Ravikant where he said um inspiration is basically like a finite resource when you feel really inspired to just act on it and writing the book would be one thing if I was just a full-time author if we were just sat in the mold it was for the book to go it's probably a very different experience but running a business alongside it was just kind of acting on inspiration so a chapter like you probably remember like a chapter like writing about the test close was something to try in the office as a concept and then going oh fuck that really works get it in the book while it's inspired and front of mind so it's this thing where it was inspiration would knock and you'd you'd chip away at it from there and then what's interesting is it's a very saturated market sales books but i can't think of many sales books that i've actually finished so i wanted to have a very well layered book i mean it's a bit of a beast when you see this book but it's a well-laid book in terms of there's the mindset factor that I think you don't get in a lot of sales books of the way to actually think about the job and then also the really actionable tips a la reading uh never split a difference or something like that yeah so those are the those are the bits and in terms of opportunities that come up we started doing a bit of speaking a little

5:45Zac Thompson:bit of public speaking a few more podcasts I I remember somebody saying this to me but I really think that you're creating a piece of ip aren't you and i don't think it's a case of like you create a podcast episode you write a book it's not like a linkedin post yeah the linkedin post might be fed to your audience three weeks later but most of the time it disappears it dies and you can repost the same thing another month down the line as we know um but i think that the main thing is like it's there so people come to us now and we're like we'll just go and check that out you do build a relationship with authors don't you like i think of my favorite authors and i think of like the relationship that you built with them even though you don't know them just by reading the book there's kind of a lot more value there so i'm hoping that years down the line it's going to help pay off our mortgages fingers crossed keep going yes and if you are a reader thank you very

6:40Jack Frimston:much for supporting if you're someone if you're someone awaiting an audible version which i've had lots of messages about it is coming it is coming okay right this is a an interesting one as well right so let's see if you can guess what it spotted that we did here so the problem was too many unqualified leads wasting time too many unqualified leads wasting time yes and i will give you a clue if you like so let's say we can i might not all right now go on let's see then i won't

7:15Zac Thompson:help yeah part of i think i'm gonna get this completely wrong but it'll be it's interesting to the brain when that i think we definitely double down on like we know that there's a pipeline of people that you speak to and some might be qualified some might be unqualified but making sure that we're qualifying them when we call back i've missed that i've not that's wrong

7:38Jack Frimston:it's more obvious than you think you might kick yourself for this so this year we launched a second business called ask or a sales consultancy and the problem we noticed was it was less um unqualified leads wasting time it was more of a case of we saw a business would come to us and say we're getting a lot of unqualified leads ourselves can you solve the problem with we have a meeting so we would attempt it wouldn't we we'd say right we're going to book you more qualified leads in the diary but the problem would persist they would still be left saying all right well i'm sitting more meetings with the right person but i don't really feel any better because we're unable to do an expert unable to close them see revenue whatever it may be yeah so we launched a sales consultancy and the first client that we brought on in fact you're probably better off talking like this the first client that we brought on had a very clear commercial target didn't they and actually we did nothing on we have a meeting with them it was all helping them out internally with their team so maybe you're best setting the scene on this one darling yeah absolutely so the big thing was like you know what it's so so easy to go into something

8:53Zac Thompson:and say this needs sales training this needs this this needs that a lot of the time what what what a company needs is it's still turnover revenue but it's not repeatable there's no processes in place and the company we worked with from start to finish you could track it so then all of a sudden when we're looking at, and we worked with them for a year, and it was a case like the first three to four months was probably quite grueling in terms of this is foundation stuff. This is building out Salesforce. This is having all of these bits here, but you need to know your data. You need to know your numbers.

9:26Zac Thompson:How else are you going to track it? And then like, okay, a lead comes in, so they're really, really heavy on like inbound as well as outbound. What happens to it all the way through? It was all a bit of like on the back of a fag packet, and then actually by implementing some processes all of a sudden people start following the processes everyone's held accountable you start to see revenue increase that was a it's been a

9:49Jack Frimston:really really exciting year i think i remember um some of the early days because you did a lot of work with that first client some of the stuff that we'd learned as wham implementing there and you telling me like the looks that the people giving each other in the room and the main boss going like that's fucking brilliant and just like running away with it straight away so the commercial goal for them was a million extra million 1.2 1.2 they've fallen short for the last two three years in a row and that 1.2 so we we were due to work with them for a full year

10:24Zac Thompson:did they achieve the 1.2 million extra they're on run right they're running at that like obviously that they run calendar year we we run from june to june um and and it was you know what it was one of those beautiful relationships where it's a case of like we said we want to get you to a position where you need to be there's still some ad hoc work that does happen some fractional bits still doing bits here and there it was a case of you can you can just run at it now like you don't always have to have the stabilizers on you know like some people bring in a fractional sales manager forever but what problem are you bringing this in to solve you've got no processes your leads aren't qualified you're not following anything we'll bring it in follow it all of a sudden you're kind of there to like run for a bit now and come back if you need it so we've only

11:11Jack Frimston:worked with a few businesses on sales consultants obviously time is limited we are selective but just having that as an extra revenue stream consulting people on the next part of the of the cycle isn't it it's the it's the the personal trainer part we're now going to be giving you the personal training but we're not here to work with you forever it's to get you in shape and then leave you to it and then get off to our ether do you get off to our base exactly right next one this is actually um this is actually an interesting one so i'll see where you take this one So this isn't necessarily from our standpoint, but this is how people feel in the space, if you will, right?

11:58Jack Frimston:Cold outreach is plateauing. So cold outreach is either the same or dropping off. That's how people feel about it. What solution or solutions have we brought in to help people feel differently about that?

12:19Zac Thompson:So your head automatically goes to AI, doesn't it? Like bring in AI and stuff like that. But I actually don't, I think AI is like your friend in terms of like having like a qualified therapist or like a genius on your shoulder. The thing that we've really, really doubled down and it's always been our game, but it's focusing on quality. Like always, do they tick the boxes? Like we talk about the methodology in the book, but it's not just a case of we want to tick those boxes for the case of ticking boxes if they're not motivated to solve a problem they're not going to attend so i think it's a kind of it's definitely felt like a year of when everyone's zigging and most people are setting up email agencies or linkedin agencies we're just doubling down and saying no we're picking up the phone because we know we can get hold of people and we're going to have that human to human interaction now this is a part where you tell me i'm wrong

13:10Jack Frimston:zach no it actually isn't but dead on dead on wow the quality piece and apparently something we're getting known for. I haven't prompted it to say this either. So the quality piece is the big one. And I think we've done a few different things this year that have probably been different on a quality perspective. Obviously, as time goes on, we learn that we've got this repeatable, predictable, reliable framework. You can pick it up in the book. It's no big secret what it is and how it works. But the team from kind of top down, bottom up are recognizing the difference between that's probably more of a callback and that's probably more actually time to go for the meeting so the results been that a lot of the the pipeline that we build there's callbacks in there but they're really really good callbacks you know it's a it's a it's an eight minute conversation but maybe missing a bit of emotion i'm going to call him back in two weeks rather than trying to sneak it over the line so some of the clients have actually got a bit less in terms of the meetings but everyone's shown up that might be a result that someone's had i saw a dashboard the other day that was a six-month campaign that 100 attendance every month but actually the the input in terms of meeting input was probably a bit lower but every single person booked showed up you know wow that's amazing like you never never never used to see that so doubling down there and then what we started to see as a result of that is people showing up and like we were always getting nice compliments on you know the person was impressed by the call they have let's see what happens but really seeing oh there's return investment happening here for people there's money pipeline all these sorts of things happening quickly which then takes the pressure of us as an agency for renewals and things like that we're kind of um what's the word i was going to use a derogatory term then say it say it's wiping its own ass yeah yeah say that washing its own face washing its own face would have been better wouldn't it right the wiping its own ass next up all right uh i don't know how how it's seen this as a problem what does the equal sign being with a diagonal line for it uh doesn't equal i don't know oh maybe yeah maybe you're right actually doesn't equal let's say let's please in the comments if we're wrong good sellers uh linkedin engagement doesn't equal revenue which is probably i imagine a thing that people would say that use linkedin like oh i don't see any return from it but but i mean we we know this i i keep

15:51Zac Thompson:talk about this like seed theory of like you plant all these different seeds and then eventually they come into fruition and i think we get messages all the time but people who have been following us for four years that either want to come and work for us now or they've been promoted from an ae to a director of sales in a new position and when they're thinking about it we're the ones that they think of and and i was having this conversation on the weekend but when it comes like marketing like what what is what when i think oh i need a new key cut right where does your brain go timson's right so so you when you think of the same right yeah yeah come on man i'm not gonna fuck with you like that no morrison's no but it's like where did your and and then when i think of like uh so there's probably two for this when i think of car insurance you go to go compare yeah Go compare, compare the meerkat, compare the market, whatever.

16:47Zac Thompson:There's one of the two. So it's who do you think of when you want to solve that problem? So this is the whole thing that we do with LinkedIn, whether it's piss-taking posts. We always try and keep it to that top of funnel, cold calling, sales agency, whatever it is, so that when people go, I need that, who are those guys? We're already in the room. so you can you can fall into a very funny game of like being known and engagement doesn't really mean anything but it's like what are you known for well i think exactly 360 there that was quite

17:20Jack Frimston:nice no no that was nice mate that was nice the um we had an interesting one the day a client well client a discovery call that booked in basically said oh i'm really fascinated by customer journey so i booked in with you but just thought you'd be interested to know I saw a really ridiculous post that you did so people thinking they're pointless the ridiculous post so ridiculous post thought I'm going to click on this program say this is a real person all the messaging on the actual profile was of the problem that you solve so I clicked on something else it might be a YouTube video or something the next thing I know I'm out for a run or walking a dog or something and I'm listening to a podcast from you then I got back from that and just booked a call in with you and that's the journey I've been on so it's having these different ways that people can actually get hold of you i i weirdly like i'm definitely not as good at it as you clearly with the engagement that i get but you do see what bad looks like as well quite a lot and it's like oh i can see what you're trying to do i saw um one before you might have seen the same one someone posting about the english women's football team winning last night did you see it and you're just like i know what you're trying to really get i know what you're trying to do that and you've actually got it so wrong.

18:37Zac Thompson:It's just, so many people get it so, so wrong. But it's like, there are people that I know on LinkedIn, right? Like that you feel like you know them, but I don't know what they do.

18:49Jack Frimston:No, no, exactly. I think, to be fair, I reckon a lot of, we were talking about it before, there's people that we know who, I don't think they know what they do. So it's not even like I've been able to, so the messaging that, can you articulately and simply say this is what i do yeah need help i don't calling i don't think loads of people can do that so anyway we've posted consistently every day on linkedin every working

19:14Zac Thompson:day for the full business day four years four years yeah so we've done it every day so people

19:20Jack Frimston:know us top of mind and it's got a full spectrum of things that we post but the interesting thing right this year we we whittled down our existing team to basically say through people outgrowing us as well but also some people have to be removed from the business we need to only keep the a players really to push us through we basically gone year two in the 700 000 so that's nice that's good so year one about 300 000 year two about 700 000 year three almost 800 000 but if we're being objective in the 700 ,000s again. So the growth wasn't big enough.

20:03Zac Thompson:It was a repeat year, wasn't it?

20:04Jack Frimston:It was basically a repeat year. And we basically got the team more refined and streamlined. So it was much smaller. So we had none of our own function anymore. So there was no cold function really this year. There was times where you might get newbies booking meetings for us and stuff. But somehow we've still grown and had lots of revenue and be able to exceed that goal. And it's probably attributed just to that consistency on LinkedIn. Yeah. So people say it doesn't work.

20:36Zac Thompson:You do your thing.

20:37Jack Frimston:Exactly.

20:39Zac Thompson:Equals through the, yeah, exactly. Yeah.