Speed Up Your Sales Cycle with a Productized Offer with Spencer Powell | Ep #787

Speed Up Your Sales Cycle with a Productized Offer with Spencer Powell | Ep #787 Speaker 2: I want you to stop working for free. If you're tired of getting ghosted on proposals, the endless follow-ups and We'll think about it as a response. There's a better way. The top agencies aren't sending proposals. They're getting paid to pitch and close bigger deals way faster. I want you to grab this free resource I just put together at agencymastery360.com slash strategy. That's agencymastery360.com slash strategy and you'll learn how to flip the script if you want to get paid for your expertise instead of giving it away for free. Hey, Spencer, welcome back to the show. Speaker 1: Hey, Jason. Speaker 2: I'm excited to have you on again for the people we'll link up to the previous episode about you scaling your agency, but For the people that have not listened to your first episode, tell us who you are and what you do. Speaker 1: Yeah. And thanks for having me back. I'm excited to be here. I run a digital marketing agency. The company is Builder Funnel. Origins come from direct mail. So my grandfather had a direct mail company. My dad bought it in the mid nineties. I got involved in a I started in 2009 and I had started a social media company kind of as a side hustle out of college. And he said, I just went to this conference and they said, direct mail is going off a cliff. So I need to transform my direct mail company into what they were calling integrated direct marketing, something, I don't know, but they basically said, you need to get into digital. And so he said, you want to come figure that out over here. And so we started figuring it out. A few years in, we created the Builder Funnel brand because we realized like having a niche was really going to play to our advantage over the long haul. And then a few years after that, he sold off the direct mail side and we spun out Builder Funnel. And then I eventually bought him out and, you know, kept charging forward. So that's where we are today. Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, today I want to talk about converting clients faster and easier. Eventually, obviously making more money because a lot of people struggle with We're talking about offering the wrong thing at the wrong time. And what was kind of your reason around doing your first foot in the door? Let's talk about that. Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 2: What was it? Speaker 1: Yeah. So probably like many folks, I was stuck in the sales seat for a long, long time. I would basically just build custom proposals for all of our clients coming in or prospects. And I would do, I would say, I mean, I would do a discovery and then basically if everything was looking good, I'd say, well, why don't I dig into your website, your analytics, and I'll build a custom, you know, plan and proposal. And I would basically use our similar methodology and everything, but I would try to. Tweak the deliverables, adjust like the quantities, you know, Hey, you have more aggressive goals. We're going to, you know, spend more here. And then put that in front of people. And so my first step that got us out of that was productizing kind of a front end offer. And so we didn't call it a foot in the door. It was more like we need a way to systematize our sales process. And so I wrote a book, the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint, a few years ago. And we, I basically said, well, why don't we create a strategy plan product? And we called it the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint. And so the way that worked is people would pay a one-time fee. We started it at 20 grand. Right now, pricing is 15 grand for that. And we basically build a one-year strategic plan and then the client can either take it and run with it or we can implement it for them. And we did try to really build in a ton of value if they did want to do it themselves. We build out a whole Asana board that was basically like a checklist for a whole year and it had links to all of our SOPs and training videos on how to do stuff. And so if they did want to self-implement, like they had the resources to do it. And then we basically were just like, let's see who moves into, you know, monthly services, which is all we sold prior to that move. So that was step number one. Speaker 2: Yeah. What was the conversion rate? First selling from a prospect to selling that $20,000 project. Speaker 1: Yeah. From prospect, like first discovery call to that, it was probably in the 10% range or 15 or something like that. And then I think at the time, for whatever reason, the first year we ended up selling the blueprint. It was like 35 or 40% moved into recurring services, but over about a year or so it actually It bumped up to like 70%, which is kind of what we thought. Cause we're like, most people don't want to do this stuff. They want us to do it anyway. I don't know. It might've just been a fluke of like the first time doing it, but yeah, so it was like 10 or 15% conversion into that. And then 70% conversion into the recurring. Speaker 2: And so what changed? Cause I remember when we, you were telling me this after the podcast, you were like, Hey Jason, I've been listening to your foot in the door thing. And then you told me about the foot in the door. I was like. And I asked the conversion rate, I was like, man, that's really not a foot in the door. That's like a really big project. Speaker 1: Yeah, it basically was like we landed a client and that's how we looked at it. We were just going from prospect to client. Speaker 2: Yeah. And so what switched? What was your foot in the door that you implemented? And like, what were the, did the conversion rate go up, I presume? Speaker 1: Yeah. Kudos to you guys. Cause we basically just, uh, stole your, your model. Speaker 2: I borrowed. Speaker 1: Yeah. Borrowed. Yes. Well, we used it as per your suggestion. I'll say you basically were like, Hey, here's how we do things. Maybe you could do something similar. And so that's what we did. We basically said, okay, well, why don't we just, it basically becomes like paid discovery in a way. And so we have a true discovery call, which we. Put meetings on the calendar. Those are just booked for 30 minutes. We try to keep them to 15 to 20, but that's really just, Hey, is this a good fit? Do we offer services that you need? Are we in the right industry? Are you the right clientele that we know we can help? If so, then we sell our marketing framework call. And the way we've structured that is it's a $497 call. And we have them send us some logins, get access to their analytics and a few other things. And then we set up, it usually takes about 90 minutes. Some of them go a little bit longer and we do a pretty exhaustive like run through of their website. We pull up A-Refs, dive into their SEO, look at their Google analytics, look at their ads, but we walk them through the framework that we follow, which is just the attract, convert, nurture, measure. Um, that we do all of our, you know, strategy plans based off of. And so at the end of that call, we basically say, Hey, you've learned a lot, take it and run with it. Two, you're like, great. I think Builder Funnel can help. Let's talk about like what that looks like, which then we just go to the blueprint or, you know, our website is called the foundation and then into recurring services. Or three, we wasted your time. Like we'll refund you. No, no hard feelings. And so, yeah, from framework to close. Last year, 35.5% of those converted. Speaker 2: It's pretty, pretty big jump. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And has anybody ever asked for the money back? Speaker 1: We've gotten two or three and they're usually just like. They were small. They just were like, you could just tell that they needed the money back. They were never going to move forward. Or, you know, there's always something funky. I'm like, I honestly don't care. I'd rather just refund it and be like, whatever, no big deal. Like that's not what we're in the business of trying to sell. Speaker 2: A big mistake a lot of people make that I've seen is they're trying to qualify someone for the foot in the door. But when I'm chatting with them in like what we call the clarity call, that first free call, we're qualifying them for later on because anybody can afford the blueprint calls, especially with, or you're the foot in the door call with, you know, for 497 or 697, whatever the price is. And what we started doing when we started doing that, then we're like, Oh, we got way more better people. Right. We're not wasting our time in the very beginning. I think you should do it for everyone just to get reps. Right. Just like. You know, just pumping that weight, get stronger. Yes. Up on the ones that are never going to convert anyway. Do you have a sense now of this person can afford the foot in the door, but they're never going to go with this later on? Speaker 1: Definitely. Yeah. And I think we took a similar approach. I mean, I just told the sales team, I was like, just book as many frameworks as you can. Like, we just want to get our reps in, like you said, because you want to practice that framework process of taking people through truly adding some value to them, like educating them, showing them where the opportunities are, and then, you know, moving into the pitch from there and converting the next step. But yeah, at this point, I mean, if If you're on that initial discovery call and you're like, this is going nowhere. Like we're not trying to, you know, waste two hours of their time and our time. If it's not going anywhere. Speaker 2: Any kind of gotchas or things that you've learned through the process that you would do differently now? Speaker 1: That's a good question. I don't know when I look back on my journey, cause it took me a long time to get out of day to day sales. And I think. The first step really was like having a productized offering because it was really tough. Like it's tough to train someone to build custom proposals for everyone. So that wasn't going to scale very well. And what that, that offer did for us was we got paid to build the custom proposal, which is the plan that we're going to do for them. And then the foot in the door that you guys suggested. Really like cinched the sales process together. Cause what we realized is like, we had the offer. I hired a sales guy and that was my first time successfully having somebody else run through a full cycle sale and sell that offer without me. But it was like, we had a discovery and then there was just like a second call and a third call. And there, there was just no structure between call one and close. And so that's really what this step did, the paid. It's a paid step where you can really get somebody invested in wanting to spend time with you and solve their problem. So I would say just having, having those clear steps in the sales process would be the US for a gotcha. But like, as long as you have those, I feel like everything else is just little tweaks here and there. You're trying to improve, you're watching call recordings, giving feedback, but that was what really tied the rest of it together. Speaker 2: Hey, agency owners, if you're sticking with one platform for every project, you're probably stuck in a growth bottleneck. More clients means more hires, which adds noise and cuts into profits. To break the loop, you need a more flexible tool that doesn't stretch your resources. Now, Wix Studio is a smart addition to your agency's toolkit. Intuitive by design, your team can quickly master the platform and focus on the work that matters the most. Now, with robust native business solutions, Like booking, e-com, and events, you can take on any project at any scale without adding cost to third party plugins. Plus, Wix Studio is a low maintenance platform, meaning you can redirect client budget toward real growth initiatives. Think more value for your clients, steady income stream, and stronger relationships. Scale your agency at wixstudio.com. And I think everyone's always tweaking it, right? Like even with, with our process, we've been doing it for years and years. There's always little things that you can always kind of pick up on. I always tell everybody always record those calls. And I'd always tell the client, I'd be like, Hey, we're going to record this so we can send this to you later on. Cause there'll be a lot of stuff that we don't talk to and we'll send you the AI transcripts and all that kind of good stuff. But the main reason why we record is so us as a team can review and we can look at, well, how did you leave off on this one part? And like, what, what's that small little adjustment we can do. But like you said, it, it's all about. Figuring out that structure of how do we qualify this prospect? Where do we move them to the next? And what are all those little milestones in order to build trust? Because the beauty about what you've done is you had a complexed kind of process to talk to these salespeople, which was complex for the salesperson to come in, complex or a hard decision for the client because it was so risky, right? It's a lot of money. And then when you kind of start breaking it down with this like offering ladder, it makes it very simple for the salesperson. It makes it simple for the prospect to say yes, because there's low risk. You get to show value. You get to see, do I like this client? Like, have you gone through any of these processes? Be like, man, this client's a nightmare. Speaker 1: Like, we'll go away. Yeah. I mean, if that 90 minutes is painful, then, you know, the rest of it's going to be painful. Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: That's awesome. Speaker 2: Well, good. Well, I'm glad that all worked out for you. I'm excited for you guys to see what else you guys can do. It also saves you time, too, of all those different follow-ups. Is there anything, Spencer, that I didn't ask you that you think would benefit the listeners listening in right now? Speaker 1: One thing that that we're just in the beginning stages of is actually playing around with the price point of the foot in the door. And we set it above, I think, where you guys, you guys had a range that you recommend. The upper end of that or something. But at 497, we basically are just looking at, we actually are currently looking for more throughput on our whole process. And so we're going, well, What if we change this to 197? We still want them to pay, but just like on that call, I don't want them to be like, well, let me talk to them. Cause you still get that. It's funny. I think it's just like there there's break points in people's minds. And I mean, it's way too early to tell, but yesterday we had The first day where we tried it at 197 and I think there were, I don't know, eight or 10 calls on the calendar and seven of them conversion. And so it was like, Oh, interesting. Again, way too early to tell if where the averages will settle out, but we're going to run that for, for 90 days and just look at that cohort of, you know, and see like, what's the throughput there. Cause we figured it out. If that goes up 50%, maybe the conversion rate from framework to close doesn't, you know, maybe that goes down a little because you pull in a few more people that really you shouldn't have, but I think our overall throughput will go up. So it's important to kind of just keep looking at it and never feel like, oh, this is dialed in perfect. Speaker 2: Yeah. The other thing too, by having a certain price, the one thing, and keep me posted on it, cause I'm interested on this. If it's too low, then a non-decision maker can do it. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: Versus, you know, if it's like, you know, 497s depends on the type of companies you guys go after and all that kind of stuff. But if someone's like, Oh, let me go check with the boss. I'm like, why, why am I not talking to the boss now? I would never do a blueprint or a foot in the door for a non-decision maker. And if that decision maker wasn't present at the meeting, I would reschedule it because then you're just wasting your time. But that's interesting on, you know, cause I always tell people the price really doesn't matter, but at the end of the day, it really does matter. Not for the profit, right? Or revenue. Speaker 1: No, no, no. But yeah. Yeah. Again, like if that takes us from, you know, five customers a month to six or seven, because we changed the $300 thing, like it's worth it. Right. We'll see TBD. Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I, I think everybody should test it out. Like, and then if you get too high and not many people are saying like back it down again, they have to value what you're doing too. Right. And do you position when you go, it's four 97 or one 97 be like, look, we're going to be losing money on this, but like, how do you position the one 97? So they don't be like, oh, that's what they charge for 90 minutes. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I don't know that we've ever really framed it. We just say, we, this is what we charge for this process. And at the end, there are these three outcomes, right? You either got value and you know what you need to do next. You want to hire us for the next step or, you know, you didn't get any value and we'll refund you. So, but yeah, I think, that's interesting. I'm not sure. I'll think about that. Speaker 2: Yeah, you should, because what I always tell people is look, We charge $6.97 for this agency blueprint. We're not making any money on it. And we're just doing it to make sure that you're serious because people are going to pay attention more if you pay for something. Right. But don't think my hourly rate is $6.97. It's well above that. Like I just preface that. So then they're not shocked to go to the $20,000 project. Be like, Whoa, I thought that was going to be. $5,000 or $1,000 or something. Speaker 1: Right. Like. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's good. Yeah. Cause you want people to, you want people to pay and move forward, but you also want them to know that there's more on the backend. Speaker 2: Or let me give you a deal. We normally charge this up. What you may want to try. Do you send them to a landing page, like an easy checkout page, or do you take their information or. Speaker 1: When we do an easy checkout page and yeah, we've been basically the way we're positioning this new pricing is, Hey, it's $4.97, but I've got this code for you and you can knock it down to $1.97. Speaker 2: You may want to position it at $1,500 and then position it $197. They're getting the steal. How do you qualify them though? I'm just going in my, in my head now, uh, you know, right. Like that would work really well for you. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we'll run this test first and then we may, uh, we'll jack up the backend price. Yeah. Speaker 2: $10,000, but act now and get two katsu knives and a vacuum. Speaker 1: I think it is nice as a, like a sales tool in your back pocket to be like, but if you're ready now, I can give you a code and we can just check out, you know, um, Some of that is a little, I mean, you're like, are you really going to honor that? Like if they say no now, then are you going to hold the original pricing? So like we try to hold, hold true to the, you know, ethical, like this, this is what we're going to do. So right now we're basically just saying, Hey, I have this code and we're not saying like they have to sign up on the call, but yeah, so far so good. Speaker 2: That's good. I always hate when people do the false urgency that drives me crazy. And I think people can see through it too. Speaker 1: They can feel it. Yeah. Speaker 2: But yeah, if you're like, Hey, if you're ready now on the call, like a lot of times when we're on our clarity calls, we're like, Hey, if you want to do this now, It's this, right? Like just tell them. So, yeah. Awesome. Well, everything's a test. Thanks so much, Spencer, for coming back on the show, sharing kind of success. And if you guys need more help with your foot in the door and your offering ladder, reach out, you know, go to agencymastery.io, click that little skill button and we'll jump on a call and you can see how our process works and how we can help your agency be more profitable. Stop wasting time, fix a lot of those profit leaks and make more profit without cutting costs, which is always a good thing. So until next time, have a Swenk day.