Video - Robert Craven on Obstacles to Growing Your Agency
VIDEO: 7:52 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven
Watch Robert Craven talking about the obstacles to growing your agency.
What is preventing you from growing?
What are your agencies biggest pain points?
What sources best generate new business leads?
What is preventing you from growing as quickly as you should be?
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:06
Hi, I'd like to talk about obstacles, the obstacles that agents is getting and receiving and finding. And what I'd like to do is refer to some research from HubSpot, which I think is pretty thorough. And I think it's pretty reliable. Now just remember, this is pre COVID-19. So it's not. It's in it's in the old, the old world, not the new world. But it'll give us a really good idea of what agencies a standard world actually are confronted with. So I'll just share screen and then we can proceed.
Robert Craven 00:44
So first question that HubSpot asked back in 2017, which I know seems like a lifetime ago, is what's preventing you growing as quickly as you'd like? And the number one, what's preventing you growing? That's the question what's preventing you growing? Because we need more sales and marketing, we need more sales, and we need more customers, we need more customers bang on your door, we need no more stuff in the top of the hopper, we need more stuff at the bottom of the hopper, we need more customers to work with.
Robert Craven 01:14
Number two is cashflow. I think COVID Post COVID We flip that round and say cash flow is king before customer and number three is we're unable to hire necessarily talent. Number four, which isn't that dissimilar from number one, I would say that number one is a symptom of number four is we're unable to differentiate ourselves from other agencies. So I would argue the inability to be able to differentiate yourself the inability to be able to separate yourself out the inability to be able to answer the question, why should people bother to buy from you and they can buy from the competition is why you need more sales. But you know, it's a survey. It's interesting, it's a snapshot in time. Then number two questions I want to share with you is: What are your agency's biggest pain points? Absolutely consistent finding new clients? Where are the new clients? How do we find new clients? How do we find them? How do we drag them in? How do we get them? How do we keep them? Number two, which just shows that this is clearly a survey with how heads off and with maybe owner managers, directors not enough time to focus on admin. Number three, finding the right staff number four, and five profitability and cash flow, I suspect profitability and cash flow will come up. But you know, profitability and cash flow is like basic cause and effect, the low profitability and low cash flow is a consequence of not finding new clients. And it's certainly a consequence of not spending enough time working on the business on admin. So there's a little bit of a cycle going on there. But again, you can see the general theme. And then the final HubSpot survey chart I'd like to share with you is this one about what sources generate new agency leads. And the number one here is referrals, referrals, because most of us prefer to farm rather than hunt and my argument would be that I'd slightly anxious so many people depend on referrals, okay, because what happens when the referrals dry up? And I would like to quote Gareth Healy, who said, he wished when he was growing his agency, he'd spent more time learning how to hunt, he wished he'd learned how to hunt earlier, the really good agencies do do two things really well, one, the ones that were really growing that we're working with, are really good at hunting, not just referrals, not just waiting for the phone to ring. The second thing they're really good at is they're really good at networking events and conferences, specifically speaking at events and conferences, which you can see a number three and four, they go out of their way to do it. And my suspicion is that this, this survey just says that not many people do speaking and not many people do conferences, rather than it's the best or it's not the best because obviously if you don't use something you can't tell most agencies rely on referrals, they rely on farming and that that's really dangerous. So let me just summarise those three charts. First one is what's preventing you growing as quickly as you would like? You need more sales and marketing. You need more cash, you need more people. Okay? And unable to differentiate, differentiate ourselves.
Robert Craven 04:36
Those are those are the top four. Question number two, what are your agency's biggest pain points, finding new clients not spending enough time working? Working on the business not finding the right people profitability cash? And the third question is what sources best generate new agency leads and they claim referrals now just because everyone else thinks it has to be First off, doesn't mean it has to be for you. Step one is figure out for you, how you can maximise your referrals, put in place operation referrals to maximise use of referrals. And then point two is think about how you can max out other things which are not referrals, think about how you can start hunting going out is a different, different different process and a different way of thinking. But start thinking about how you can hunt, we can talk about that on another day. So just to wrap up a couple of points, one, referrals are not scalable, absolutely clear, you cannot grow an agency forever on referrals. People say you can, but they are not referral, scalable. Secondly, the reason you struggle to win new business is not because you lack talent, or you lack capability is because your business development, your marketing is not as sophisticated as it as it could be. And the second reason, the real reason, okay, the agency has struggled to win new business, or maybe this is a symptom of why they failed to win new business is because your pipeline is too small, with a really, really small pipeline, you've not got enough to go out. And therefore by definition, you're you're you're, you're going to not have enough business unless you're really, really careful, you have a really, really narrow pipeline. And everyone in that view convert. So beginning of the game, you know, is figure out how you're going to increase increase your your spread, increase the people you talk to, because if you're only talking to one person, you can only sell to one, but if you're talking to 10, you can sell to 10.
Robert Craven 06:41
And on that note, I'm gonna say, just think about it. Think about what the obstacles are that most agencies have think about what the really good agencies do. And the clue there is the really good agencies don't depend purely on referrals. And they probably have a really good operation referrals in place. What the really good agencies more often than not do is they run events, they run seminars, they run webinars, they do private dinners, they do private lunches, they find every opportunity to talk to people, they talk on stage, they run the run, they find every opportunity pre or post COVID-19. The process of engaging with more people doesn't change. So the challenge to you is how can your agency How can you engage with more of the right sorts of people so one, figure out who the right sort of people are and to figure out how you're going to engage with them. And on that note, I'm going to say thank you for listening and onwards and upwards.