Building Your Agency Better

Chris DuBois1:28

I is understanding a prospects business crucial for creating a great offer. You know,

Tim Kilroy1:35

for a long time, you know, first cash was king, and then, you know, then, then content was king. We know it's King right now, or queen or emperor or whatever. It's context

Chris DuBois1:51

like, relevance is king or queen or ruler supreme, because it doesn't matter how good your offer is,

Tim Kilroy2:04

if,

Chris DuBois2:06

quite honestly, it's not relevant to me. So for instance, I'm sure just like me, you get a bazillion people on LinkedIn reaching out saying, Hey, would you like 40 sales calls guaranteed this month, or you don't pay.

Tim Kilroy2:23

Yeah, and I would love them. Oh no, actually, no, actually, 40 sales calls I would hate.

Chris DuBois2:31

Oh, yeah, right, because,

Tim Kilroy2:34

right,

Chris DuBois2:35

but, but, like, 40 sales calls, that's a like, that's, that's that, you know, that's, that's quantity over quality, right? Because I don't actually want to get on a sales call and make an offer to someone until they know a lot about me I know a lot about them, and so that I know that I can help, and they understand the help that I can give, and that is the key to making an offer that sticks. So in order to create a great offer, you have to know and understand what your prospect needs.

Tim Kilroy3:16

Now, many, many, many people focus on the thing that they do, like, 40 sales calls this month, right? That would be, you know, if you're making an offer, that's my output, but I don't actually buy your output like you're not, you're not a cookie factory, right? You know, you are like you buy the result that you get from your vendor, right? So it doesn't I don't care. Honestly, I don't really care what you do. I don't care how you do it, necessarily. I just want to know that if I buy something from you, I'm going to get the result that I want.

Chris DuBois4:00

And what's really, really, really important if you're going to make an offer is that you have a really good idea of what makes sense for me. Because if you don't know what's important to me,

Tim Kilroy4:17

how can you possibly sell anything to me? By the way that's, that's my dog, Fred. That's his butt back there.

Chris DuBois4:24

And I'm pretty sure in just a minute he's gonna start barking, but because he's out there looking for squirrels. But that's okay. It's, it's ambience, yeah,

Tim Kilroy4:35

yeah,

Chris DuBois4:37

yeah. And so and so the like,

Tim Kilroy4:41

you know, as a perfect example. Um, so let's imagine that you're an email marketing agency,

Chris DuBois4:49

and you have a great service. It is amazing, like it is so cool and awesome, and that's like the best in the whole world. And you.

Tim Kilroy5:00

Are and you are, you know, engaging with a business that is entirely focused on new customer acquisition.

Chris DuBois5:10

Do you think that they're gonna buy an email marketing service

Tim Kilroy5:16

if their headspace is 100% on new acquisition?

Chris DuBois5:21

No, like it doesn't matter how good your service is,

Tim Kilroy5:26

but it's not relevant to them at this moment. Now, it might be someday in the future, but right now, you need to understand what it is that your target

Chris DuBois5:36

person needs. And I don't really like to say target you know your ideal client profile, even though I use those terms, because

Tim Kilroy5:47

what you have is

Chris DuBois5:50

every ideal client profile is too big,

Tim Kilroy5:54

because what you were looking for inside of that ideal client profile is something that's really specific, like I am looking for. In my case, I'm looking for agency owners who are either at the very beginning of their journey and don't know what the heck they're doing, or I'm looking for those people who are

Chris DuBois6:16

transitioning from

Tim Kilroy6:19

a participate, a major participant, in their delivery business, into somebody who leads their business like those are the two spots where I have the most impact.

Chris DuBois6:34

So

Tim Kilroy6:36

can I help a $25 million agency with something absolutely

Chris DuBois6:44

is that my best offer to them? Am I the most relevant person for them?

Tim Kilroy6:51

No, because they can hire somebody to to work on the specific thing that they want or need or their particular problem, and so I could make the best coaching offer in the entire world,

Chris DuBois7:08

to

Tim Kilroy7:10

Mike mothner, who is the the the chairman of W promote, I could make the best coaching offer in the whole world, but I am completely irrelevant to him.

Chris DuBois7:23

You know, my experience and his experience, we're, they're not like,

Tim Kilroy7:28

Could I help him with something? Sure, I guess I probably could,

Chris DuBois7:32

but I'm not going to be able to, you know, I'm not Bill Campbell, the trillion dollar coach or what. You know, I'm not going to be able to help him in the way, in the specific way that he needs to be helped.

Tim Kilroy7:46

And so

Chris DuBois7:48

that means I should not waste my time making offers to people that I don't think that I can help. So in order to be able to make a great offer, I gotta know

Tim Kilroy8:00

what the impact that you are looking for and how what I do supplies that,

Chris DuBois8:07

right? Yeah, that's one of the things I work on.

Tim Kilroy8:12

So with my clients, it's not necessarily niching. We're just trying to figure out, like, what is that one problem that we solve? Yeah, for one audience, right? So now, like within that, right? Even I could pick a problem, like, I help HR departments solve this one, one issue, yeah, right. But when we go to the audience, that's going to be looked at very differently, between a manufacturing company and a tech company, yeah, and so and so, even how we talk about the problem in the problem and the context around the problem does shift entirely just through that lens. And then your service being able to actually deliver on top of that, right? Makes it chaotic, if, if all those things aren't all aligned, yeah, yeah, I

Chris DuBois8:57

agree entirely, you know. And there's, there's, there's two ways you can think about your target audience, or the problem that actually the problem that you solve, you can think about it vertically, which is, I help e commerce, retailers who are in this situation, right? Right? That's cool, and that's kind of a vertical offer. You know, you don't pay a lot of attention to people, you know, to insurance agents or, you know, to school teachers, right? You just, you're working with with E commerce, retailers. That's awesome. However, there is, like, a horizontal problem,

Tim Kilroy9:30

much like

Chris DuBois9:32

Google, my business profile optimization, like, it doesn't really matter

Tim Kilroy9:39

who you help there, but you are helping businesses who are at a particular stage across all industries. That's like a horizontal problem.

Chris DuBois9:49

Now, the hard thing about horizontal thinking

Tim Kilroy9:54

is that you got to learn a bunch of stuff, and you have to understand the language as you were saying. You have to be able to make.

Chris DuBois10:00

The benefit of what you do relevant to in a bunch of different contexts. That's why it's easier

Tim Kilroy10:07

to actually, to sort of focus on a particular, you know, a vertical, you know, a vertical rather than a horizontal. Problem.

Chris DuBois10:16

You know, it's not necessarily better. It's just easier,

Tim Kilroy10:22

because most, most wildly successful agencies,

Chris DuBois10:27

you know, like everybody who works you know, all the companies inside of WPP, for instance, like, that's a horizontal solution to marketing problems, like, they service every conceivable industry,

Tim Kilroy10:40

right? So they have marketing solutions horizontally,

Chris DuBois10:45

you know, there, it's not just like they are, you know, that like they're, they're, you know, vertical, and they only work with these certain kinds of businesses. They work with all sorts of businesses. I mean, there's probably with WPP, there's probably a scale. If you do like, they're not gonna, they're not gonna work with that $2,000 month client, but, right?

Tim Kilroy11:06

Yeah. And if you can find that intersection between the horizontal and vertical, right, you can now get very specific on an offer. You just got to make sure that the TAM is large enough to be able to support, you know, whatever you're trying to do with your business. Yeah, and, and. So one thing to say is there is not an audience in this world that is so narrow that you can't make a 5 million or ten million agency out

Chris DuBois11:34

of it. It is really just about your ability to do so. So, so worrying about tam is probably not worth many people's times, because Tam, that is a that's a scale issue, right? Like that is a that's like a macro economic issue that does should not influence your day to day engagement.

Tim Kilroy11:57

So just know that that every market

Chris DuBois12:02

is big,

Tim Kilroy12:04

and every market is really, really noisy and crowded.

Chris DuBois12:09

So there are no simple niches. There are no

Tim Kilroy12:13

blue oceans or whatever. Everything's a red ocean. Like, just deal with it, right? Like there's, there is no untapped opportunity unless you're inventing some kind of new technology, there's no there is no untapped opportunity in the service world,

Chris DuBois12:29

your success comes down to your ability to to advocate your message and execute on Your promise.

Tim Kilroy12:38

Yeah. So

Chris DuBois12:40

I had one client who wanted to do like National SEO, or just, yeah, right, like hit SEO for national stuff, because he was really worried about the the ability to grow his business if he only focused on a locality. However, all of his current wins were around one specific city in the US, and so we were able to pull up just Chamber of Commerce information and show just for the three types of companies that he wanted to work with in that specific city, he could be a $6 million agency, and that was for, like, if he won 3%

Tim Kilroy13:13

of of those companies and stuff. So it's very conservative in the numbers, but yeah, that just more credit to what you're saying, right? And like, you can become a five plus million dollar agency with almost any audience, absolutely. Just, how do you make it happen? Absolutely?

Chris DuBois13:30

Yeah, so I guess what are some of the biggest mistakes then, like, separate from maybe have not having the context.

Tim Kilroy13:39

Are you seeing agencies make as they start building their offers,

Chris DuBois13:43

one of the biggest issues is

Tim Kilroy13:47

they try to, they either try to make their initial offer

Chris DuBois13:54

meaningless.

Tim Kilroy13:56

You know, we'll do a, we'll do an SEO audit for you for free, like, that's already that's like, that's our offer to attract you to talk to us. Well, you know, the functional value of an SEO offer to most companies is negative, like, it's just a waste of time because they can't do anything with it. They don't know how to do anything with it, and they don't understand what it means. So it is a great thing. Like, as an as an SEO agency, you know exactly the value of that, and you think you are giving something of I value,

Chris DuBois14:26

but if it's not something that is

Tim Kilroy14:30

actionable or or understandable by your client, it's kind of meaningless, like they wouldn't be. They wouldn't have responded to you if there was not a problem that they thought you could solve, right? So, so the the the primary issue in that sort of initial attraction offer getting the attention offer is that people offer something that they think is high value, but the client does not, or the market does not,

Chris DuBois14:57

but when it comes down to the.

Tim Kilroy15:00

Actual engagement offer. You know, how do you structure the engagement?

Chris DuBois15:05

They often focus on deliverables.

Tim Kilroy15:10

Right? We will optimize this many pages, we will create this many ads. We'll write this many blog posts, whatever.

Chris DuBois15:20

And that's cool, because it creates some sort of accountability,

Tim Kilroy15:27

but that's not what the client is buying like they do not care.

Chris DuBois15:34

Because, you know, if you if you make two ads and they are amazing,

Tim Kilroy15:40

and they're killing it.

Chris DuBois15:44

Why do you worry like, why? Yeah, why do you why do you worry about making the other 14 that you obligated yourself to? Or, if you, you know, if you've obligated yourself to two blog posts a month, and those blog posts are not successful, it doesn't matter how good they are, for whatever reason, they're not successful.

Tim Kilroy16:02

Well, why would you offer? Why would you keep that part of the offer? So what you need to do is create an offer that facilitates the desired outcome, and it helps from just from a delivery standpoint, if you can allow yourself some flexibility in the deliverables,

Chris DuBois16:23

meaning, you know, like, we can see 60 days ahead. So in months one and two, like we're going to deliver this, and then, you know, in month two, we're going to, you know, reevaluate, do strategies for months three and four, and just, you know, do it that way,

Tim Kilroy16:42

or the the other thing is,

Chris DuBois16:46

people make offers that are delayed gratification,

Tim Kilroy16:53

SEO, email

Chris DuBois16:57

and even even Facebook ads like they're oftentimes the things that people are selling is a future benefit that requires a long time to make work.

Tim Kilroy17:12

And that might actually like that might be true, like it, yes, it does take time for you know, for your SEO strategy or content strategy or work however, like time to value or time to usefulness.

Chris DuBois17:29

It's so hard to create an offer that's saying, Pay me for three months and then I'll show you something

Tim Kilroy17:37

so you so the offer, whatever offer you meet you make, needs to create some sort of tangible benefit,

Chris DuBois17:49

you know, like, sort of immediately after the kickoff meeting. You know, within the first couple of weeks, there's got to be some sort of win.

Tim Kilroy17:59

And so

Chris DuBois18:01

often, agencies make these offers that

Tim Kilroy18:06

are too conservative, like they're afraid of over promising. So they say this isn't going to work for 90 days, or, you know, it's going to take us, like you've got to spend $20,000 in media before the before the algorithm truly understands you or whatever

Chris DuBois18:22

you gotta figure out a way to fix something right now. So, because by the time you know if you're billing in advance, they have paid, you know, if they're if you have a setup fee, great, you know. But they've paid setup fee maybe month one, month two and month three, and then, you know, so they've made three or four payments to you, and then they're getting benefit.

Tim Kilroy18:46

Like, it's really hard to justify that, because, you know, are you, if you're a marketing manager, you're going to go to your your boss, and say, Hey, listen, um, yeah, I know that. We're a small company, and we need, you know, return on investment, you know, within 60 days to keep our cash cycle working. But I would like you to approve this budget where we're not going to get any return, you know, for 90 days.

Chris DuBois19:14

Well, no one's going to say yes to that. But what's really crucial, what's what's crazy, is that agencies don't understand

Tim Kilroy19:23

how other businesses work. So if a company has to have a 60 day cash cycle, where the money that they spend gets paid back to them within 60 days, offering them a 90 day solution does not work.

Chris DuBois19:38

And so lack of understanding, not only of what your client wants, but of how your client works, is a real killer for so many agencies,

Tim Kilroy19:50

right? Everything you're saying is music to my ears, because it's things that like I'm preaching to my

Chris DuBois19:57

clients. I'm glad I'm not singing. Can.

Tim Kilroy20:00

It's because then everybody would, would, would shut this off right away if I started to

Chris DuBois20:07

say the it's funny. So Max trailer and I were had a done an episode of beers with Max, and we kind of gave him a conclusion. Like a lot of coaches, we all kind of think the same things, and it's like, Why does no one want to listen to us and just do these things.

Tim Kilroy20:22

And it really takes going in and having the conversation face to face and being like, this is how we're gonna do it. Yeah? So, so, you know, it's, it's,

Chris DuBois20:32

it's,

Tim Kilroy20:34

it's broccoli versus candy,

Chris DuBois20:37

right? Like, candy is awesome. Like, everyone wants the candy, and that's why the that's why these, these, like, 40 sales calls in a month, guaranteed. Like, that's candy. You know, it's bad. It's bad for your teeth. It's bad for your eyes. You know, it's not sustainable. You're gonna get sick eventually. You gotta eat some broccoli. So

Tim Kilroy20:59

even if you were that agency that is selling, you know, the fact that we like, the real benefits are coming and, you know, three to five or six months from now? Cool. Well, you got to take that broccoli and you got to dip it in some cotton candy so it tastes good right now,

Chris DuBois21:16

you know. And I think the, and,

Tim Kilroy21:20

you know that's the sad fact of the matter is you have to sell the things that people will buy

Chris DuBois21:30

and deliver the things that they need, right? And you're not being disingenuous, because you're gonna, you know you're gonna, you're gonna deliver those things that they think they want, but especially in a coaching or agency space, often your real job is to say, hey, you know what that problem that you think you have

Tim Kilroy21:51

that's like, that's the symptom that's like, that's the drip, like blowing your nose does not cure your cold, like it gets not out of your nose, and that's awesome, but you still have a cold. And what most you know, what most people are looking to buy is the you know their their issues that they have a drippy nose. They don't want to drip your nose anymore,

Chris DuBois22:16

but they're not necessarily willing to hear you have a cold,

Tim Kilroy22:22

yep, agreed. One of the something I've done with one client is we break up like the short term and the long term goals. And they actually sent a proposal to a client, and they were towards a higher end of the proposals that were received for this, but because they addressed the near term and said, Hey, this is what you need. Like, we need to do this. That's probably what everyone else is telling you, because it's pretty obvious, but we know that's going to take a while to actually come to fruition. And so we want to do these things in the short term that'll, you know, actually get you some return, so that you don't have to wait forever for this one thing, exactly. And and they the client went with that, because they were able to say, Hey, this is how we're going to be able to help you right now as well as in the future, right? And so a simple shift, and one other thing that that this goes back to agencies not really understanding how other businesses work.

Chris DuBois23:17

They need to understand

Tim Kilroy23:21

how the client is going to apply the benefit that the agency can deliver, right? So, yeah, we we like, we'll go back to organic search. Great. We're going to double your traffic in the next 12 months. Cool, awesome.

Chris DuBois23:40

I mean, by the way, if you're an SEO agency, don't ever sell that because traffic is easy. The right traffic is hard. That's like this. But anyways, but

Tim Kilroy23:51

if you're going to be able to, like, double their revenue from organic traffic, like, that's cool,

Chris DuBois23:57

but

Tim Kilroy23:59

how were they going to use that benefit, right? They want to double their organic traffic because, like, they want to get more organic revenue for a reason. And the reason, by the way, is not revenue.

Chris DuBois24:14

Like, the reason is, well, you know, we think we get better LTV out of those clients, or we get you know better. We get you know better frequency of purchase. Or you know that allows us to, you know, deploy more profit

Tim Kilroy24:32

into our ad spend so we can grow beyond what we can reach organically, right? There's like you need to be able to understand how the client perceives your benefit, because rarely is it revenue,

Chris DuBois24:48

right? Most of the time it is. It's either a solution to a, you know, a profit problem,

Tim Kilroy24:59

or it's.

Chris DuBois25:00

Solution to a cost problem, and those are actually different,

Tim Kilroy25:06

but

Chris DuBois25:08

by and large, for the most part, what you were selling as an agency is more profit or lower costs.

Tim Kilroy25:17

And then knowing, knowing that also gives you this additional context to be able to look at your offer and start adding things to it that better facilitate, you know what you're looking at for that ultimate end goal. Yeah, so, but just another, another reason to get, collect that information, that context, yeah. And by the way, I'm gonna say something here that will get my, you know, online marketer,

Chris DuBois25:47

you know, ID card taken away. Please do not do a value stack.

Tim Kilroy25:52

You know, the Russell Brunson, like, okay, like, you know, the base service is this, but then we're gonna give you this for free, and that for free, and the other thing for free. And the third thing you know, like, You're probably too young to know who Ron Popeil is,

Chris DuBois26:08

yeah, so back when I was so, back when I was a kid, we had these crazy things called infomercials. And there's this guy, Ron Popeil, who sold crazy products, like a, like, an at home chicken rotisserie thing, or,

Tim Kilroy26:25

you know, a

Chris DuBois26:27

mandolin, a something that, or food processor slice things really, you know, really small. Or my favorite, and this is a product I owned, pocket fisherman, which was a teeny, tiny, little short fishing rod, which is freaking cool. But what he would do is be like, you know, like, are we gonna charge $79 for this? No, we're gonna charge 79 or 69 or 59 or 49 we're gonna charge $29

Tim Kilroy26:54

and if you order in the next 10 minutes, we're gonna give you this thing, that thing, and the other thing, you know, a $17 trillion value for, you know, for 2999 plus shipping, right? When you start, when you take this offer that you have of fee for service, right? And you start layering other stuff on top of it, that you know, where you're saying, like, this is a 290 $7 value I'm giving to for nothing or like, first of all, nobody believes that at all, like, nobody believes that you ever sold that thing for 297, even if you did. Secondly,

Chris DuBois27:33

nobody wants to be sold to,

Tim Kilroy27:37

except in very specific circumstances, if you're like, if you're at a conference and you're selling from the stage,

Chris DuBois27:44

you know, like that, that sort of value stack stuff, that's part of the performance, right? And that's a time when you can do it. But if you're selling, if you're a business, selling to other businesses, and you're both serious about your businesses, nobody's gonna fall for that load of crap. That is, here are your free bonuses.

Tim Kilroy28:05

So please don't do that. Lots and lots of people do, or they choose to, you know, offer, like, money back guarantees or whatever performance guarantees, like, don't, don't do that either

Chris DuBois28:20

like, you can offer satisfaction guarantees. Like, hey, if we don't hit the goals we agreed on, like, we'll stop charging until we do. Like, that's cool. Or,

Tim Kilroy28:30

or, you know, if we don't, like, or, you know, we're if, if we've signed a 12 month contract, and after three months we don't hit these milestones, like, yeah, you can, like, you can fire us without the 30 day notice. Like, those kind of guarantee. Like, those are fine, but the like, we guarantee to earn your money back. You know who? You know who

Chris DuBois28:53

takes those offers,

Tim Kilroy28:56

the people who need their money back, right, right? People who need their money back like those are the people take those offers and and here's the this goes back to another, another issue. Lots of agencies end up selling to businesses that can't afford agencies

Chris DuBois29:15

and agencies owners, agency owners twist themselves into not trying to service the people that can't afford them,

Tim Kilroy29:25

because they want that revenue, or they see some kind of big opportunity.

Chris DuBois29:29

Here's here's just a hard truth,

Tim Kilroy29:34

a great agency cannot fix a broken business

Chris DuBois29:40

like agencies are very bad at getting from zero to one, like, they're really good at getting from one to five or one to 10, but zero very bad at zero to one. And so if you're talking to people who do not have a business, that makes sense already,

Tim Kilroy29:58

you can't help them.

Chris DuBois30:00

Yeah, it doesn't matter how awesome you are,

Tim Kilroy30:04

like they need to fix other problems before they can worry about approaching a broader market. Which is what agencies do. They help you find a broader market, right?

Chris DuBois30:19

Yeah. So on the value stacking. We just had this conversation internally because we're launching a workshop, and we had the exact same conclusion that you just went into which, like, nobody is going to believe that this worksheet is $500

Tim Kilroy30:37

right? So, like, unless we can apply a an actual number based on the value that we're actually providing and the costs that, you know, are incurred with whatever like, we don't need to put a price on any of this stuff. We just have the overall offer. And here's everything that's included. And I think it's a much stronger appeal to the offer, rather than having people like, look at each item and be like, well, is that worth that much money? Because when everything is 2997 in this value stack, and I'm buying for 1000 bucks, it's like, okay, well, obviously you're losing a lot of money by giving me all this. So like, yeah. Now, by the way, I will admit right this very moment on my website, Tim kilroy.com there, there is a pop up on the home page that says, you can get my, you can get my cold email Compendium and the perfect proposal

Chris DuBois31:31

for free. And they say it's and it says on it that it's $127

Tim Kilroy31:36

value. Well, that's true, because I did, in fact, sell many of the cold email like so, but they're older, and I'm working on new ones, so I'm giving them away for free right now. But just know that I have plenty of customers who paid me 97 bucks for the cold email Compendium and 29 bucks for the, you know, for the the so I just don't want to be called the hypocrite,

Chris DuBois32:02

right? Get it out now.

Tim Kilroy32:04

No, I mean, that's the same we do. So we're doing a workshop for this landing page. And so we actually tallied up the hours that are going to go into the actual just delivery of the workshop, and said, How much is it worth for having all of these, you know, expert presenters? What would they be charging? And so, yeah, it's a $4,000 offer for based on just purely on their hours inside this workshop.

Chris DuBois32:26

Thanks for inviting me like thanks for having me. That's beyond

Tim Kilroy32:33

that a couple times from people now.

Chris DuBois32:40

Just don't talk about it, you know, right? I understand now why people keep their weddings a secret so that they don't have to tell everyone. Yeah, like Sandra, we didn't like, we don't really like you, like you're a second tier, like you're the only you're the backup weekend planned, like you're not, you're not in the primary rotation. Sorry, right?

Tim Kilroy33:01

Yeah, just a couple friends, right? That we're inviting 100 or so, right? And you just missed the cut. You were like, your number 704, right? I'll just say it's all from my wife's side. So yeah, which is the issue here, right? It was all from my wife side for the workshop and invitations. Okay, all right, fair enough. So

Chris DuBois33:22

with that out of the way, so what are some of the elements that are the components, I guess, that you'd be looking for in a great offer, now that you've got the context. And,

Tim Kilroy33:32

yeah, so by the way, like, there's, there's three offers that you make during any two to three offers. The first one is the attraction offer, like, what am I getting? What is, what's the benefit to you to talk to me? Like, why would you voluntarily put yourself into my sales cycle? Right? And so that is, you know, that is something you know, hopefully, of of,

Chris DuBois33:59

of high value that can that's that gives the client, or the potential client, more information about their business or about what they're trying to achieve than they would have otherwise, right? And so that and so and so that might be, you know, whatever, like, I have a, I have a free or, you know, free, free book. You know, it might be, you know, it might be something like,

Tim Kilroy34:25

you know, a CTA scan of your website saying, hey, you know you're not consistent what you're offering, or whatever. Like, something that helps them understand that you know what you're doing, right, like that. And so that's one thing to get their attention, to get them to that's the value that they get for subjecting themselves to your sales spiel, right?

Chris DuBois34:47

And then there's and depending upon how your conversation goes,

Tim Kilroy34:51

there are two potential other offers.

Chris DuBois34:55

One is the upfront offer, which is sort of like the test.

Tim Kilroy35:00

Offer. And I'm actually a big fan of these for most for most agencies,

Chris DuBois35:06

because most agencies do a very poor job of qualifying people. And so if you do this upfront offer, which is a like a narrow subset of what you do, some some small slice of what you do, or something that is very directly related to what you do,

Tim Kilroy35:24

where you can work with the client for a short period of time, two to six weeks,

Chris DuBois35:31

and it's interactive. It's not like you go away and do something and come back to them, but you actually have to work with them

Tim Kilroy35:40

so they understand your process, the way that you act. You understand their process, the way that they act, you know. And you're being paid for this, right? And so in the,

Chris DuBois35:52

in the when I work with Dev clients, you know, people who build websites and that sort of stuff, or technical things, you know, we basically, you know, say, like a, it's really the kind of like a paid scoping project notes, it's narrow, it's discrete. It has real value. You know, there's benefit from it. So,

Tim Kilroy36:11

one of, one of my, one of the guys that I'm friendly with, Tim keen, you know, he used to do an upfront offer, which is, he did of Facebook ads. He said, You know what? We'll we'll install a, you know, a loyalty program, or you know, or rewards program you know,

Chris DuBois36:29

you know, in your business, just as you know, and it's, whatever it's, I don't know how much you charge for it, like 2500 bucks or something. And it was short, discrete, so that people get the you know, that he would be allowed to see how their business works, and be able and then, you know, and then have real ideas about what to offer. And so that short like that upfront offer, everybody should have one. You should need to think about it sort of not as a downsell necessarily, but rather as something that

Tim Kilroy37:01

primes the pump, right? So, if people, if, if people are, are, if you've not jumped over the trust hurdle yet,

Chris DuBois37:11

right? And they don't want to sign a contract,

Tim Kilroy37:15

you know, that's two or three or five or 12 months long, whatever, like, you give them something that's that's not a lot of money relative to who they are, and it gives them the opportunity to work with you, and you get to, you get all access to all the data that you need, so that you can make them a really specific offer later.

Chris DuBois37:37

Right now, that's actually that's very not enough agencies have that. I wish everybody would have one, because it is so powerful, because number one, it gives you just way more exposure to a bunch of different ways of businesses that the businesses work, and you get more data so you understand a whole bunch more stuff about more businesses.

Tim Kilroy38:01

And then there's the, you know, the actual engagement offer. Like, Yeah, we love you. You love us. You know, here's what we here's what we suppose, or here's what we propose.

Chris DuBois38:13

There's not much that you need to put into that,

Tim Kilroy38:19

other than

Chris DuBois38:21

like, this is the process by which we do our job. This particulars don't matter, but you just, you know, you just want to, like, outline what you do,

Tim Kilroy38:32

not how you do it, or the details or the deliverables, but you basically want to say, like, you know, our process is, you know, we gather data, we do some testing, whatever, whatever it is, right?

Chris DuBois38:44

But the offer is, you know, as we execute these things, here are the benefits that you specifically are going to achieve, which match up to the strategic things you told me you wanted to accomplish.

Tim Kilroy38:59

And so

Chris DuBois39:00

if you were just promising, and if you're just promising revenue or return on ad spend or traffic, those things are not strategic. You've

Tim Kilroy39:10

got to get really good at asking questions. Like, cool, you want to grow your revenue?

Chris DuBois39:17

Why? Like, okay, you need more profit. What do you need more profit for oh, you've got to expand the team, or we're not making enough now. Awesome, great. So everything that I'm going to tell you from here on out is going to have a direct line from the thing that I say to solving that strategic issue for you.

Tim Kilroy39:35

And if you cannot draw a direct line from what you do to what they need, you don't have the right client. Like, it's not a fit,

Chris DuBois39:46

and so do not be satisfied with

Tim Kilroy39:51

offering

Chris DuBois39:54

better return on ad spend or lower CAC. Like, those are the

Tim Kilroy39:59

like, those are.

Chris DuBois40:00

The measuring sticks,

Tim Kilroy40:03

like, but you know what? Like, what's the impact of a lower CAC on your clients and their business? Like, you have to understand that to be able to sell the transformation that you're offering, right? Because really, when, like,

Chris DuBois40:20

we're

Tim Kilroy40:22

going to go back in, the way back machine again.

Chris DuBois40:26

You know these days, the bumblebee the transformer. He's like this cool Camaro that turns into a transformer. When I was a kid, he was a BW bug,

Tim Kilroy40:39

but, but you know, what your client is really

Chris DuBois40:43

buying is turning their VW Bug into Bumblebee, right?

Tim Kilroy40:49

Like, that's what they're buying. Like, they want to be able to know how what you do gets them from being an underpowered

Chris DuBois40:59

little car to something that's really powerful, right? Yeah, and so you got to know, like, how they're going to deploy

Tim Kilroy41:10

the benefits in order to create to power that transformation.

Chris DuBois41:16

And if you don't understand that, you are not going to be able to make a sale that sticks, because you will be somebody who is simply as good as the performance on their last report.

Tim Kilroy41:35

That

Chris DuBois41:37

feels like a good place to move into our last questions. All right, hit that one hard, right there the I guess the first one is, what book do you recommend every agency owner should read? There's two of them. I can just pick one, and one is one that you and I spoke about

Tim Kilroy41:57

when we went chatted a little bit ago. It's Extreme Ownership by Jocko willing and Leif I forget what his last name is, yeah, yep,

Chris DuBois42:09

very specifically,

Tim Kilroy42:12

it is the it's the the areas around decentralized decisioning, because that concept of making the entire clean clear, the entire plan, clear to everyone why you're executing this plan, everybody who's involved in the plan and all their parts supporting the plan.

Chris DuBois42:34

That's how organizations work. Most agencies are thinking like, I give you the SOP, you deliver the SOP, and then I yell at you because the SOP did not have the desired outcomes, and you didn't do another thing that I told you you should never do. So just follow the SOPs, you know. And that's and that's the way most people manage the other one. And this is, this is,

Tim Kilroy43:00

this is for people who want to become both better

Chris DuBois43:07

leaders,

Tim Kilroy43:10

better bosses and better people. It's dare to lead by Brene Brown,

Chris DuBois43:18

because it talks about

Tim Kilroy43:21

the emotional side

Chris DuBois43:25

of leadership and the and the importance of showing up as you were,

Tim Kilroy43:30

the importance of showing up without your defensive armor on,

Chris DuBois43:36

and that that dare to lead book, quite honestly, it can change your business relationships. It can change your your intimate relationships, and it can change your family relationships.

Tim Kilroy43:52

Awesome, yeah,

Chris DuBois43:55

yeah. So here's the last question is, where can everyone find you? Tim killroy.com

Tim Kilroy44:01

and one of to sort of follow on this, this idea that we just talked about as decentralized leadership. This is total promo pitch. Yep,

Chris DuBois44:14

I've actually just introduced a new program for smaller agencies so people, you know, under 20 on staff, probably maybe 25

Tim Kilroy44:23

where

Chris DuBois44:25

we construct a demand gen and lead gen program

Tim Kilroy44:31

that is not owned by you, the founder,

Chris DuBois44:35

and if you don't have a marketing or lead gen person on staff, we are able to distribute that work across the entire team

Tim Kilroy44:44

in their spare time, like really spare time, not extra hours, but spare time, so that we create an environment where everybody knows what's going on, the growth of the business, everybody knows how it all works. Everybody gets to see the results. But.

Chris DuBois45:00

Coolest thing is more teamwork between the team, because they start working better together, because they have to, and then that spills over to the other parts, and

Tim Kilroy45:10

it's a lot more fun because we do some ridiculous gamification. Like, you know, if you have the stupidest meme of the day or the campaign, like, you get the dad joke award, or, you know, it might be a cantaloupe, who knows, you know, just like really stupid stuff, but basically ways to invest in your team so that they can invest in your business,

Chris DuBois45:37

right? Awesome, and you can find that@timkilroy.com

Tim Kilroy45:42

forward slash,

Chris DuBois45:44

demand, sorry. Gen plus,

Tim Kilroy45:47

G, E, N, dash, P, L, U, S,

Chris DuBois45:52

awesome. I wish I had been able to get Chris dubois.com but apparently, a lot of Chris Dubois out there, so, oh, yeah. So, like, there's only, like, 250,000

Tim Kilroy46:04

people named Kilroy on the entire planet. So there you go. Maybe I just, yeah, and I was, I was, I'm old, so I was, I, I got here really early, yeah, yeah,

Chris DuBois46:16

all right. And it might be, might be worth a lot of money later. There you go. No, I couldn't get kilroy.com which is really sad. And I actually approached the owner of that, which happens to be some really small company. They wanted $50,000 short. And I said, screw you suck it. Like, don't like, Good luck. Good luck. All right, hey, it was really nice talking to you, Chris, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for joining Tim, this is great. All right, take care.