Documenting My Journey

[S_uthman]

Context:

So I've been on and off the forum for a few years now (Getting caught up in the rat race) and I've finally decided to document my journey.

I've decided to run an Agency with my business partner (who is also my friend) that's specific to a certain niche.

My friend initially thought of this after getting "inspired" by the SMMA Gurus on YouTube. I'm already tuned in and can filter out the fakes from the real thanks to @MJ DeMarco and his valuable books. As for my friend... let's just say it's a work in progress, he's going to buy MJ's Millionaire Fastlane book to learn more about going Fastlane and providing real value in entrepreneurship rather than copying and pasting the same crap from these "Gurus".

Now I was a bit hesitant at first to pursue this venture, as this whole wave of SMMA is very shady and scammy. But after reading a few threads from @Andy Black and @Black_Dragon43 I've found that there are ways to grow an agency whilst providing value and remaining ethical. We now have the mentality that we want to build a valuable Lead Gen company that helps companies in our niche specifically. We started the process in mid-December 2023 and now have two clients after loads of Cold Calls and Discovery Calls, I'm not jolly about that at all and want things to change to make this a Fastlane business.

I want to start changing up our strategy and focus on differentiating ourselves from the rest of our competition in this space. @Black_Dragon43 has provided a lot of value in his threads that have helped me gather some ways that could help equip us to stand out in what already is an overwhelmingly saturated market and business model.

Some Value Skews To Improve On:

• We're already thinking of improving our lead qualification process before we send the leads to our clients, to ensure they're not time wasters. By improving our calls to them and utilising techniques we've learnt from some books. Bear in mind this isn't something being taught by the Gurus at the moment.
• We want to improve the offer that we're giving to prospects. At the moment we charge a fee on the ads and a fee on the service to do the work. They're normally the same number, i.e. if someone wants to spend £500 on ads we will charge £500 on our service. Not happy at all with this and feel like it could be done differently.
• Small things like improving our slide deck we show on the sales calls to break down our service more and communicate that it's not a service but a transformation - thanks @Black_Dragon43
• We do offer a guarantee, but we're not sure if we should keep that as it's cliche and sounds like what everyone else is doing - 'Minimum of 5 qualified and booked Leads a month or you don't pay'.

Feedback:

I'm open to feedback or criticism and would love to hear any more suggestions to help me make this a viable Fastlane business whether it's books to read or general advice on the value skews etc. It's all welcome and I'll continue documenting my journey once there are updates.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

Awesome, love to hear you guys are on the path to crushing it. Two questions to help you generate value skew:

1) Why should they buy the service?
2) Why should they buy it from you?

Both of those questions need very specific answers. Most agencies answer them with bullshit like “we have really good service!” or “we love people” or “we’re really creative!” etc.

It’s bullshit because any agency can claim it. Just remove their logo and their claims wouldn’t help identify them vs other agencies.

The first thing you need to convince anyone is that they need the service.

Then you need to convince them they should buy the service from you and not someone else.

Here’s a sample from us:
1) Why should agencies buy LinkedIn Lead Gen?
• Because most agencies rely solely on their existing network and referrals, and they've hit a glass ceiling that they can't grow beyond using just that.
• Because ads are too risky/expensive
• Because you need to build relationships to sell a service, rather than be transactional (cold calling, cold email)

2) Why should they buy from us?
• Because there's no other company that builds prospecting lists like we do, by aggregating data from multiple data sources, quality scoring them to determine highest likelihood prospects, and then manually verifying them to ensure they're all a match.
• Because we provide everyone a 90-Day Agency Marketing Plan™ as soon as they start with us, so they can fix their entire marketing & sales system to close as many leads as possible.
• And so on.

You get the idea. You need very specific answers that your competitors do NOT have.

This is how you build a differentiated business that stands out.

 

[S_uthman]

Awesome, love to hear you guys are on the path to crushing it. Two questions to help you generate value skew:

1) Why should they buy the service?
2) Why should they buy it from you?

Both of those questions need very specific answers. Most agencies answer them with bullshit like “we have really good service!” or “we love people” or “we’re really creative!” etc.

It’s bullshit because any agency can claim it. Just remove their logo and their claims wouldn’t help identify them vs other agencies.

The first thing you need to convince anyone is that they need the service.

Then you need to convince them they should buy the service from you and not someone else.

Here’s a sample from us:
1) Why should agencies buy LinkedIn Lead Gen?
• Because most agencies rely solely on their existing network and referrals, and they've hit a glass ceiling that they can't grow beyond using just that.
• Because ads are too risky/expensive
• Because you need to build relationships to sell a service, rather than be transactional (cold calling, cold email)

2) Why should they buy from us?
• Because there's no other company that builds prospecting lists like we do, by aggregating data from multiple data sources, quality scoring them to determine highest likelihood prospects, and then manually verifying them to ensure they're all a match.
• Because we provide everyone a 90-Day Agency Marketing Plan™ as soon as they start with us, so they can fix their entire marketing & sales system to close as many leads as possible.
• And so on.

You get the idea. You need very specific answers that your competitors do NOT have.

This is how you build a differentiated business that stands out.

Yeah, this makes total sense, that's not something I considered so I'll brainstorm this with my partner. Thanks for the valuable insights as usual!