The Agency Growth Engine Show – Details, episodes & analysis

Your agency will fail at hiring effective salespeople if you make these Top 3 Mistakes…..

It’s a well-known problem in the small to midsize agency space that salespeople are hard to find and usually end up bombing in their roles.

This is why most agency owners give up and just keep doing the sales role themselves. But it’s the hardest way to scale and grow.

Plus, when you go to sell your business and you are leaving the agency, the new buyers consider your agency acquisition “high-risk” when the top (or only) salesperson is taking off.

Join Trice and Ryan on Episode 34 of The Agency Growth Engine Show and learn why most agencies fail at hiring effective sales roles. But in the meantime, here’s the 3 Big Mistakes in Agency Hiring we discuss…..

1. Agency tries to hire an Account Manager/Sales hybrid role.

Guess what, these two roles are two completely different people. They will either be a great account manager or a great salesperson but you will be disappointed because they will only be great at one of these roles.

2. You hire a salesperson without someone to manage them.

Salespeople get frustrated when they don’t have a friend in the fight. They need constant clear direction and someone who will enjoy talking to them about their opportunities, challenges and victories.

3. The salesperson’s pay structure does not set the up to win!

Properly setting up the base pay and commission is challenging to non-sales experience agency owners. I know you don’t want to overpay AND risk low performance/results. But by getting the instant gratification pay and the long-term reward for building a book of business correct, you can have a salesperson for a long time.

I still agree that hiring salespeople for agencies is very challenging. But it can be done with success if you understand how these 3 Hiring Mistakes cause the role to fail before they ever get started.

What hiring successes or fails have you had in hiring for sales roles?

Learn more about Marketing Agency Coaching and Selling at Healthy Brands Agency Coaching and Selling website.

Before you hire a marketing agency, make sure they eat their own food!!! How do marketing agencies self-promote? Do they post as often as they are telling you to post? Why or why not? How do they generate leads? Is it the same way they are telling you to do it? I'm gonna cut right to it friends! If a marketing agency is telling you to do paid ads to generate leads, is that what they are doing? Or do they say "no, that doesn't work for us?" If they say you have to post twice a day, take a look at their social media accounts to find out how often they are posting. Ask them about their own lead generation tactics and what they have found successful. The reason why I ask is that often time I find that marketing agencies don't do the same things because they don't see the ROI or time. Remember this.... There are short-term strategies and long-term strategies. Your marketing agency should understand and do both. The best way to tell if an agency is truly accountable for their results is to investigate if they "do what they say". Does your marketing agency "walk the talk" or just "talk the talk?" Ask, them that if they would spend their own marketing budget on those tactics. If not, what would they change and why? Let's get into it on Episode 33 of "The Agency Growth Engine Show". We deep dive into one of my all time-agency pet peeves and why it's important. Learn more about marketing agency coaching and brokering from www.heathybrands.com.

Learn more about the hosts on LinkedIn

Ryan Parshall

Trice Alford

The Agency Life is glorified and admired by the world over. The fast pace, fun culture and abundance of creativity flowing every day attracts so may to this industry. So why would anyone want to sell their digital marketing agency?

Join Ryan Parshall and Trice Alford in Episode 24 of The Agency Growth Engine Show, we tackle the Top 3 Reasons Agency Owners Sell their business. Tune in and find out the reality and journey of owning an agency with all its glory and downsides both.

But first, here’s a sneak peak…

#3 Agency Owner(s) Retire

Plain and simple, time to call it quits. After a long run at the agency life, they deserve to go out in style and slow down a bit. Retirement and Divorce are usually the #1 reason why business are sold in general. But not with agency owners…read on.

#2 Can’t Grow Anymore

Every business owner has their limits. No matter how hard they try, they can’t seem to get past a certain revenue, head count, or client number. They had what it took to get the agency where it’s at, and have had a good amount of success to hang their hat on. However, most agency owners have to evolve with their agencies growth and sometimes it just reaches its limit.

#1 Burnout/Exhaustion

Often related to #2 above, but burnout can be for many reasons. They never worked into a leadership role and still doing the day-to-day work? Or they don’t enjoy selling and getting new customers? But the reality is that often it’s the business organization and operation of an agency that takes its toll on creative people when they “just wanted to do good work”.

And there it is! Listen as we tell stories about the final stages of owning an agency and all the emotions that go along with selling an agency!

Have you sold an agency? Why did you do it? Please tell us about your journey!

Learn more about Healthy Brands and Sell Your Digital Marketing Agency with a specialist with over 1300 Qualified Agency Buyers on our website.

Did you think owning an agency was gonna be easy? Here’s the 3 stages agency owners go through until they gain control…

Many tell me they would have bought an agency vs. trying to grow one from scratch. They often can avoid the first 2 stages of sometimes painful growth. But here ya go….

Stage 1: Startup

When you first start your agency for the first 1-3 years you will be between 1-7 people and taking all the business you can get from anywhere you can get it.

Be prepared, you will work a lot of hours and working “in the business”. Forget about being an entrepreneur and just leading others you’re too busy DOING the work and that’s how it’s going to be for a while.

In the Startup Stage, you know you don’t know most everything about business growth and are eager to learn.

What many don’t realize is that for a few years, you are usually the #1 salesperson in the agency. So if you loved doing website work, SEO or Social Media, guess what, you will be doing sales A LOT. So get ready to learn a new skill set if you have not learned sales 101 basics to get started.

Stage 2: Growth

In this stage you can be around 7-15 employees and you may still be doing some of the actual work, but mostly now you are helping find new business (still doing sales).

You are doing more leading and managing of people, processes and profits! You are growing and trying to grasp everything you need to gain control of what you are building. Things break almost daily and you are patching the ship and keeping it afloat.

You can still be working a lot of hours in this stage and you tend to find your “ceiling” and it’s damn hard to get past it. This is where I usually come in and help with agency positioning, getting organized and preparing to scale and growth to your agency’s potential.

Stage 3: Control

Finally, you have figured out what you do best and how to present your agency to world. You have a strong Mission, Vision and Goals. Your processes are tightening up and your sales come much easier now that you have the confidence of knowing what problems you solve and who you solve them for.

Congrats…you made it to the “Promise Land”. So many think that they will get here in year 2, but the truth is it's usually between 5-15 years depending on the owners experience and leadership teams ability to adapt and grow.

Listen to Episode 23 of The Growth Engine Show with Trice Alford and Ryan Parshall and don’t forget to Subscribe!

Learn more about Healthy Brands Coaching at https://healthybrands.biz/

What Stage is your agency in? What stage do you think is the hardest and why?

Agency Owners, when should you hire W2 employees vs.1099 Contractors (freelancers)?  

Most often the agency owner has this big vision of growing an agency with this massive team of employees. Somehow the way they see success is by how big the agency gets in revenues and employee counts.  

In my experience, this is disastrous thinking. More employees does not = more profits. In most cases it = less profits.   

Today’s healthy agency structure is often a hybrid model of a smaller team of full time client facing employees with an outside team of contractors that allow you to expand and contract as needed.  

No need to add overhead when you don’t have the full-time work.   

There are so many experts out there to hire for speciality work that are more than willing to be a part of your team virtually, on an hourly or project basis, that you simply don’t need the big building and huge staff.  

So when do you hire the full time employee? Usually it’s when you have 30s+ hours of work for them and client demand for those services.   

Join Ryan Parshall and Trice Alford on Episode 22 of The Growth Engine Show where we get into all the details of decision making on how you build out your agency or marketing team.  

Learn more about Healthy Brands Agency Coaching and Brokering Services on our website HealthBrands.biz

Welcome back to Season 2 of the Growth Engine with Ryan Parshall and Trice Alford.  Owning an agency without real profit is called a hobby! You are not….

a “successful business owner”, you are not an “entrepreneur”. So what do you do?

Two key things control margin: Labor and Price!

So what do most agency owners do? They dive into managing their labor. They spend so much time in spreadsheets, time tracking, micro-managing labor and hammering on their own people.

Hmmmm? Understanding your labor and being efficient is important. But do you have more control over labor, time or price?

If you said PRICE…you are correct. If you want to make real margin, charge the right amount, which is usually much higher than you are thinking.

How long are you going to continue trying to figure all this out before you find out that you simply have to increase your pricing. In many cases, you need to increase 20% or higher.

For some of my clients, I ask them to double their pricing if they are under $100 per hour. Anything less means you do not value your services and expertise.

Listen to Episode 21 of The Growth Engine where we tackle the most difficult decision for agency owners…price increases. But it’s much easier than you are making it!

Learn more about Healthy Brands business coaching for agencies and small to mid-sized businesses. 

So you started your company and had success. But now revenue is stalled out and you don’t know why…

Congrats, you’ve tasted success, added people. processes, customers, products, services and grown your business. Don’t get cocky! Guess what, your journey and hard work has to continue.

You see, you did good! You did all the right things, but you have hit a plateau and your business is now struggling to grow because you are NOT the same company you were a few years ago.

You know the saying, “what got you where you are at, is not what it will take to get you where you are going”. The is very true.

Most often you don’t know this, but you could be going through an “Identity Crisis”. You would never think to call it that. BUT…

Join me, Ryan Parshall and Trice Alford in Episode 20 of The Growth Engine Show, I’m going to give you my TOP SYMPTOMS YOU HAVE A COMPANY IDENTITY CRISIS.

Roughly 8 out of 10 times I coach a CEO, Business Owner or Leadership team, this is what I find.

• Revenues are stalled out and no matter how hard you try, you feel you are going nowhere.
• What used to feel organized in your business now seems like a tangled mess.
• It’s become hard to tell people what you do when asked (you do a lot of things, for a lot of people, with a lot of benefits)
• You now have a lot of different types of customers and cannot focus on just one segment or group.
• You are not, or no longer, dominating in your area and losing market share.
• Your marketing messages are no longer working and leads are declining.

You have grown to the level you are at and it’s time for a RESET. Discover who you are TODAY.

The answer is right in front of you. The answer already exists in your company’s DNA. You’re just too close to see it!

Things have gotten so complex that you cannot untangle that rope and get things organized in thought, reality and in your core messaging.

Solve this Identity Crisis and you will break through the ceiling and start growing again. It will create a new and exciting energy in your company’s culture.

Listen to this eye-opening podcast episode and then start taking the steps you need to Re-Build a Healthy Growth Engine!

Learn more about our business coaching and brokering services here https://healthybrands.biz/

Most business owners won’t pay attention to the real things that increase value in their business until it’s too late. It’s time to sell or retire and REGRET!

What if you could focus on all the right things now and have plenty of time to integrate all the things in your business that consumers love, will help grow your internal culture and make you wealthy when it’s time to sell the business?

Well let’s do that! Listen to Episode 19 of The Growth Engine Show with Trice Alford and Ryan Parshall and “Start Your Engines”!

Here’s our list of the TOP 10 Ways to Build Value:

1. Healthy Cash Flow: Stop milking your business dry for tax purposes.

2. Owner’s Benefits: Get a lot out of your business and make it worth it.

3. Build Recurring Revenue: Stop the one-off project/service cycle.

4. Big Contracts: Got some big clients? Make it contractual and win.

5. Customer Lists/Data: The #1 asset all companies should maintain.

6. Processes & Expertise: Create repeatable processes for success to follow.

7. Company Assets: Right size your liabilities and make sure they pay for themselves.

8. Build Leadership: grow a team of leaders that can run the company without you.

9. Own a Product/Territory: Try to negotiate or win marketable exclusivities.

10. Team & Infrastructure: Build a team of qualified people that are good at one thing.

This is my short-list and of course there are other factors that help your company get a raise in multiplying factor when it comes time to sell your business.

The truth is that companies usually do not excel at all of these items. But the more you can do, the better the payout when you list your business. Please join us and learn more about Healthy Brands Business Coaching and Brokering Services at www.healthybrands.biz

You think your people love you? You think you are a great leader? Then answer this… If you got fired as the owner, boss, CEO, and your team had the choice, would they hire you back? Let’s be honest, being the leader at the top means that you are not always loved by your team. You have difficult decisions to make and not everyone agrees with those decisions. It’s a hard job but somebody has to do it! Honestly, at times, I think they would not have hired me back to be their leader and other times yes. The leader is always judged harshly. Many times your people think they, or someone else, could do your job better than you do it. So would they hire you back because you did a fantastic job or would you get canned for good? Next question….would they hire you back in the leadership role or do they think your value to the team lies somewhere else? I know my team would have hired me back in the Sales role for sure. They knew when times got tough, I could make sales happen. Often I think they wanted me to drop the customer off to them and get out of the way after I brought them onboard. In Episode 18 of The Growth Engine Show, Trice Alford and me, Ryan Parshall, go in depth on these questions, discuss Dos and Don’ts and ways to win your team over. Learn more about Healthy Brands business coaching & business brokering services on our website.

Are you a Visionary CEO that has a creative mind and always coming up with new ideas? Or do you work for someone who has a hard time focusing on finishing one initiative before pushing the team to tackle the next? 

These are descriptions of a Visionary-Minded CEO. They may be high energy with a drive like nothing you have ever seen. Often times the Visionary CEO will stop at nothing until they get what they want. The problem is that what they want constantly changes and that exhausts everyone around them.

Most often they have a good heart and care deeply for the well being of others. But they are often misunderstand by those around them and others have a hard time understanding them. 

I should know all about this personality type because it was ME. I was just made this way. My mind loved to chase dreams, make things better and create new things all the time. But it drives other crazy!

Being a Visionary CEO is what made me successful overall, but at what cost? Before I truly understood how to lead a company, I was often railroading others in my company, talking over them, giving orders, and other really bad leadership traits. 

The worst trait of all was lack of focus and constantly changing directions. Nobody wants to work for that person. It's the definition of madness.

But with help from some books I read, other business owners like me and really focusing on getting organized and setting goals, I mastered this gift of Vision that was horrible when it came to leading others. 

Stop, breathe and organize your thoughts. Find ways to keep your mind from racing. Serve others before yourself! 

If you know someone like this, it's very hard to fix. Please don't judge them too harshly. When they can harness their Visionary thoughts to focus them for the good of the company and growth, they ARE the person you want to work for.

Fast growing, exciting companies often have a Visionary in the leadership team. Without their Vision, business would be very boring! 

So listen to Episode 17 of The Growth Engine Show with Ryan Parshall and Trice Alford and learn all about the Strengths and Challenges of a Visionary Minded CEO. I think you'll understand more!

Learn more about Healthy Brands Business Coaching and Business Brokering Services on our website.