October 29, 2024 • 29 mins
Join host Kurt Schmidt in this engaging episode of Schmidt List as he chats with marketing expert Danielle Fauteaux. Danielle, known for her work in building revenue generation systems and refining business development pipelines, shares valuable insights into the current challenges facing marketing agencies and service providers.
Key topics covered include the shift from hustle culture to strategic, relationship-focused marketing, the critical need for resilience in business, and how to enhance emotional intelligence and soft skills within teams.
Danielle emphasizes the importance of viewing lead generation as a team effort and discusses practical strategies for achieving long-term client retention and sustainable growth. This episode is packed with actionable advice for agency owners, marketing strategists, and anyone keen on confidently navigating the evolving market landscape.
Key Highlights:
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/schmidt-list-entrepreneurial-insights--2664825/support.
Key topics covered include the shift from hustle culture to strategic, relationship-focused marketing, the critical need for resilience in business, and how to enhance emotional intelligence and soft skills within teams.
Danielle emphasizes the importance of viewing lead generation as a team effort and discusses practical strategies for achieving long-term client retention and sustainable growth. This episode is packed with actionable advice for agency owners, marketing strategists, and anyone keen on confidently navigating the evolving market landscape.
Key Highlights:
- Lead generation as a team sport.
- Post-pandemic market challenges.
- Building resilient marketing agencies.
- The importance of relationship-focused marketing.
- Enhancing team emotional intelligence and soft skills.
- Strategic advice for impactful approaches heading into 2025.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/schmidt-list-entrepreneurial-insights--2664825/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:22):
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to have you join us.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Today's guest on Schmidt List is Danielle Fotau, a marketing
expert transforming agency revenue systems. She'll share insights on team
based lead generation, pandemic challenges, and building lasting client relationships.
Tune in for game changing strategies you won't want to miss.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Danielle, How are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Great, Kurt, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thanks for coming. I'm so excited to hear because I
am excited to learn from you today. Tell me about
the work you do and who do you work with?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Sure so I work with marketing agencies, Performance marketing agencies,
Web deep shops, market research firms even so kind of
anything in that scope US in marketing to build their
revenue generation systems and refine their business development pipelines, and
a lot of the work that I do hinges on
this mindset that lead generation is a team sport, and
(01:31):
so you want to leverage the superpowers of everyone on
your team, fill the gaps with outside vendors, and really
build that powerful system that's going to be repeatable and
help you scale your agency in a resilient way.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Wow. Hey man, that's all I got to say to that.
Let's talk about some of the challenges that have been happening,
mainly over the last eighteen months that I've seen with
a lot of service providers, either in marketing or software development.
What are some of the changes you've seen from when
the pandemic is sort of slow down and where we
are at today. What challenges are people experiencing and what
(02:05):
are you seeing out there? M hm.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
The biggest challenge, and you and I were just talking
about this in the pre show, is both you and
I are seeing this need for people to actually fight
for business now and actually put into work. You actually
have to go out and generate demand for the services
that your agency provides. You have to be really strategic
in how you're positioning your brand to a specific audience
(02:28):
and solving a specific problem. And once you've get opportunities
in the door, it's not as easy to win. There's
more competition fighting for those dollars, So you really have
to deliver a value to them and make it super
clear upfront before that relationship begins. And then if you've
won the relationship, you've won the project. You build out
that scope of work and you start delivering on it.
(02:50):
You have to really up your game in relationship management
to retain those clients and keep them loyal to your agency.
So it's a three front battle, and it's something that
agencies aren't used to. If we think back to what
was going on a couple of years ago. So, Kerr,
are you seeing anything different? What would you add to that?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I would agree one hundred thousand percent it is. It's
a very different world. A lot of people are focused
on what maybe worked five years ago, and they're very confused.
And so what I've seen a lot of people do
to your point in the last few months is try
to hit more easy buttons and not trying to get
back to it. So they'll hire a salesperson and then
(03:27):
that salesperson will last maybe a year, and then they
complained that they didn't bring in any work in and
but they're like, this is so confusing, this is I
don't understand. This is what salespeople do. I must have
just not hired a good salesperson. No, you probably didn't
set them up for success.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
And that's the thing. Let's press into that, Kurt, because
this mindset that a lot of agencies have had comes
out of a playbook that SaaS companies pushed down our
throats for years.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Oh yeah, ashtag hustle exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Think about the playbook that SaaS companies to use. They
like to scale because they can. They're not a service model,
they're a product model, a digital product model at that,
so they don't have the same constraints that agencies do.
So they like to scale with really big programs and
advertising and a lot of the marketing work that they
(04:18):
do then and that they advocate, you do hinges on
those promotion channels, and that doesn't necessarily work for service providers,
which is what you are. Service providers have to look
at marketing through a lens of relationship building and trust
building marketing. If you look at it free digital marketing,
when the Internet exploded and everything changed, the core of
(04:40):
marketing is to build trusting relationships and we have to
get back to that if we want to win in
our businesses. Looking forward, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
One hundred percent. I was talking with someone just a
couple weeks ago at a industry conference, and I told
them this is more like the mad Men days in
terms of market You've got to build a not just
you got to build trust, just like you said, but
you have to build almost an atmosphere around what you're doing.
That's got it. There's got to be a feeling to
(05:08):
it that I that gravity, the gravity that pulls people in,
not just a fancy logo and then a bunch of
people sitting around a whiteboard photo on your website, right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
And that gravity that you can build the atmosphere not
only pulls them in, but it keeps them there. They
stay in that sphere of influence that you have. And
one of the really interesting things that I've been having
more and more conversations with agencies about lately is their
customer experience. A lot of people they just were trying
(05:39):
to survive all of the projects and demands of the
last couple of years and everything changing operationally and even
just administrative changes that needed to happen. That they forgot
the need to really listen to their customers and respond
to their feedback and make sure that they're staying a
tuned to market demands. And a lot of that is
(06:00):
something that we need to get back to. There's this
concept of focusing on your accounts and in your marketing
and not just trying to do inbound marketing. I know
this kind of goes against the grain a little bit,
but doing all the inbound marketing as a service provider
is not going to work. It's part of the puzzle,
but it's not the full puzzle.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, for sure. I just had this conversation too, not
too long ago, because back when I was running my
agency a few years ago, we spent a ton of
money on some cold outreach and we got nothing out
of it. And I was told over and over again
by these outside forces, right, and we see them and
agency owners that get them, you'll get these messages in
(06:44):
your LinkedIn inbox. Right, that's I'll get you sixty leads
a week, and you don't have to pay for anything
if they don't work out, and all these carrots that
are being dangled out there of look, just another easy
button is here for you. Just pay me and I'll
take care of it for you. But as you and
I both know, that's just not working in our industry.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Right, Yeah, absolutely not. There are no easy buttons. You
just have to get to face that reality. The hardest
things in life are the best things too. And I
like to think of it kind of on a scale
where you're measuring with time and up the y access
would be your commitment to something and being dedicated and
(07:26):
committed to a specific problem that you're solving per specific
kind of person in a very specific way. That commitment
level that you would carry through over time is what
is going to build the momentum that you need to
be positioned resiliently. And what do I even mean by
that word resilience. It's your ability to navigate the highs
and loans of a given market without your business having
(07:49):
to close its doors. Basically, in those low points, do
you want to have had built up enough reputation and
build up your cash savings to get you through those
tough seasons and have a service model that it stays
in demand even as the market shifts, even as new
technologies and marketing vehicles come and go. Your core is
(08:11):
what people will come back to. That's expertise that you
can provide to their problem and their specific marketplace.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, that makes sense because you see it all over
the place where there's just not a lot of I mean,
I remember when I was in school in college for
visual communications, and one of my professors asked, why don't
advertising companies advertise? And we're all They're like, what would
(08:39):
they say? What would they say? We're better than those guys.
We do more than those people do. And what I've
seen over the years and the ones that are doing
well these days are the people that are just focused
on outcomes. They're just focused on ROI and outcomes, that's
what they're talking about, versus a giant list of services
being menu of services on their website, their case studies
(09:01):
instead of saying about look at how bad this looked
before and look at how good it looks now. Like
that used to work, but it doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Because even creative departments have to measure up to ROIS now.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, they've got KPIs too, Yeah, and especially the bigger
the companies you're working with, the more stringent they're going
to be on that. I mean with you, if you're
working with small businesses, you could probably skirt by a
little bit. As it grows, they're going to be looking
and saying is this providing actual value? And what you
were seeing is, I mean, why do people hire a
(09:36):
marketing agency, for example, It's usually because their marketing agency,
their marketing group internally is probably too small to do
the work that needs to get done. They need more
hands on deck. But they're not going to just build
up a giant marketing team. But we saw a few
years ago a lot of people started really focusing on
building up their internal marketing teams and stop using outside resources.
(09:59):
And I think part of the layoffs that have happened
in the last eighteen months, you saw a lot of
marketing companies inside of companies get kind of gutted. And yeah,
so I'm seeing more and more of those opportunities, but
they're more choosy than they've ever been before. They're not
just looking at the agencies that have the nicest website.
(10:20):
What I've found with a lot of the places is
the people that are really showing off who they are,
and I mean not just in case studies, but in
the type of work they're doing in the community, like
what they're part of charities, or they're throwing events, or
they're sort of living their values in public. And I
(10:42):
find that those ones are getting much much more attention
than the people who are like, we're great crafts people,
so you should hire us.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yes. I think what you're saying, Kurt, is that people
clients are looking to hire agencies that are within their
existing ecosystem and that's from similar values.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Is that what you're saying, Yeah, that's one hundred percent.
I think that they don't want to just work with
the best. They want to work with people that are
going to make them look good too. Absolutely when it
comes to big firms, right, So like McKenzie. If if
I want, if I've got a multi billion dollar company
(11:23):
and I need it, I need to look good, I
tell people I'm bringing in McKenzie and just even saying
that can make your stock price go up.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yep. Yeah, it's And that consulting model is something that
I think agencies need to pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
This is something that I think Kurt you've been saying
for years. I've been saying for years. If you don't
build up a team of people in your agency that
act as strategic advisors, you're going to get left behind.
And that's exactly what we have seen since the increased
use of AI and the shift of internal resources to
be more in house. That's exactly what we're seeing. The
(12:02):
agencies that have built out advisors, they're winning way more
than the smaller shops that just want to do a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yes, yes, exactly. And the problem that I find is
that because the owner or the owners or partners have
had to carry things on their back for so long,
they kind of are just stuck in that mode that
it's all up to me. At the end of the day,
I got to pay everybody's salaries. I can't rely on anybody,
so I just rely on myself. And then they don't
(12:31):
realize how many blind spots that they.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Have and why are they even in that position to
begin with? We have to ask that question, if we're
going to move forward and build something better than the
way that it is today, why is all of the
weight on the owner's shoulders. Why isn't the team picking
up of some of the weight where are people slacking
in some of the responsibilities that could help drive the
(12:55):
agency's business development pipeline forward. Project manners are a great
example all of this. They are on the front line
to how a project goes and a person's willingness to
do more projects with your firm. Account managers are easier
to understand because they are handing the client relationship, but
they're often not equipped and given the support that they
(13:17):
need to actually succeed in generating more demand from that
client and capturing that demand in a way that is
actually a benefit to them as well. So we have
to ask the question why is it broken? Is it
broken because we haven't designed it to work? And what
do we need to do to change the design so
that it does work.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, I love that you brought that up, because what
we end up doing is we're following some sort of
business model that is based off of a different type
of business than what we're running In an agency, everybody
is a salesperson and to your point, the project manager
if they're not incentivized in the right way there. I
(14:02):
used to work at an agency where the project managers
were incentivized to get stuff done on time, on budget.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That's what they were in efficiently, So sometimes they would
cut corners.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, they would cut corners and they would close the product.
They would try to run to the end as fast
as possible so I can close out the project and
be done with it and then it's over. And that
didn't work for when you wanted to build relationship with
the client and add on, it worked for what they
were in, but that's what they were incentivized for. They
were incentivized to finish the project and finish it on time,
(14:36):
on budget, which again you want that, right, but you
also want that client to think what else could we
be doing together? And it's and if you leave it
just up to the client to come up with those ideas,
that's not a partnership.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
You're a vendor, no, and they will view you as
a vendor and they will get frustrated and they will
that's much more. Yes, look for someone that is actually
a strategic advisor to them because they want to know
what else they could be doing. Because when an agency
can provide that insight, they look better to their leadership
as well.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the
head is that you've got to build a culture like
that inside the organization as the leader to saying we're
all in the sales boat here. At my last agency,
I mean, we gave a big bonus. Anybody who brought
in a referral that signed, you got a bunch of
(15:29):
money and you didn't have to do anything. But every
employee was able to get that. And we had a
bunch that would bring in referrals all the time and
it worked great, and it wasn't that And I've heard
arguments from other owners saying I don't want to distract
the team, and I'm like.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I think, I think that is a cop out. If
I'm being honest, There's there is so much much hidden
potential if you can properly communicate to your team that
they should be as invested in building these relationships and
(16:10):
identifying opportunities with clients and then give them the support
structure to actually go out and win the business and
then the benefits alongside the agency for that too. There
is so much hidden potential there, and it's a cop
out to say that people would get distracted because if
they're focusing on delighting a customer so that they keep
(16:31):
coming back, and if they're focusing on bringing a new business.
They're focusing on it exactly the right things.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, it's a choice that people make when they join
an agency. I mean, you're going to be most likely
client facing at some point, and so if you're hiring
people that don't want to be client facing, you're kind
of setting yourself and them up for failure. And so
knowing that if you are hiring those people, then to
your point, Daniel, you've got to give them the support
(16:59):
and the tools in order to be successful, because maybe
they can only take an opportunity so far, but they
need to know when they can pull like the cord
and get an account person or a founder or somebody
into the next conversation. Hey, you should come to our
next meaning because the client's asking for some potential things.
(17:20):
But I remember at agencies years and years ago, you'd
hear about that after the fact, because that wasn't their
job was to listen to. They'd be like, okay, cool, yeah,
let us know how that goes.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yes, oh my gosh, my heart just melted.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
H Yeah, yep, but if you but again, it's a
culture thing. It's not even just a process thing. I
know some people, especially in engineering, founded companies that can
be overly processed driven. And but there's certain things in
our business like you just can't measure I'm sorry engineers
out there, you can't measure everything. And people say, if
(17:58):
I can't measure it, I can't manage it. Like there's
some things you just can't manage. There's some things you
just need to watch.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
M Yeah, there is going to be a level of
present for yeah, yeah, and show up for it. Showing
up is half the battle most of the time. Can
we talk about the other elephant in the room on
this pleasure, which is the fact that there are a
lot of team members that would be much more effective
if you help to develop to their relationship building skills,
(18:25):
their emotional intelligence, their soft skills that if you as
a leader, as an owner, a partner, as a leadership team,
if you can proactively find ways to pour into them
and develop their skill sets in those arenas, they will
do a lot better, even if you don't set up
anything else. If that's even just one thing that they
(18:48):
will automatically do better. Ideally you would be doing both.
But that's another component here.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, And if you've got if you've got a team,
and maybe there's downtime there's always time to grow, so
you need to have things in place for when maybe
work there's a break in work, or these things where
people can focus on continuing to grow. Because when they're
working on projects, everybody's happy, right, you're billing, they're growing
(19:14):
because of the work that they're doing, the business is growing.
It's all great. But then when there's benchtime or other things,
a lot of people just kind of I don't know, well, yeah,
go sit down on some meetings or things. But at
some of the agencies where I've worked at, where they
had these things that would immediately engage. Here's this course
that you should start taking or you should finish from
(19:36):
the last time you were on the bench. Here's this
book that we bought for you to read, and here's this.
It immediately goes into the next phase where they are
continuing to learn how to grow. And to your point,
if those things are designed in a way to build
those soft skills to help them learn more about how
(19:58):
the business functions, because I know I've beat up on
engineers a little bit here, but designers, a lot of
them don't even know how the place makes money. In
a lot of cases, the hill, they're like I don't know.
I make stuff and more is more right. And no,
I can't tell you how many times I've had to
take the crayons away and be like, no, stop working,
we're goods.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yes. Setting those boundaries and educating the team on how
to win as an agency with their help is so important,
And I love talking through what opportunities would be to
build in time for specific roles. If you think about
even just allocating ten percent of every single person's time
(20:40):
towards your agency's business development efforts and revenue generation efforts,
that's about four hours a week, half a day, and
you can make so much progress with just that little change,
and most of the time people won't seal it very
much in their actual workload, and they actually get to
collaborate on something new and exciting as a team together,
(21:01):
which can boost morale. It can improve the way that
you're engaging their ideas as well, which is always a
positive thing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, And to be honest, I'm just gonna this might
be a hot take, but if those things don't get
you excited as an owner and those creating those opportunities
and then being able to buffer and pay be able
to pay for those things, you just shouldn't have full
time employees. Oh, you should just go to the contractor model,
because unless you're excited to lead people, grow people and
(21:32):
do the work and do the business, there's just no
reason for you to have employees. That's a really good
point because there if you just look at them as
sort of a means to an end and a thing
that a sponge to squeeze more out of. You should
just go to the contractor model. You'll be much happier,
you'll enjoy it much more, and you won't leave a
streak of decimation in your path as you grow and
(21:56):
build your business of people who hate who go out
there and talk about what terrible experience it was working there.
And that takes time because and that's where I think
finding leadership groups, taking leadership courses, reading leadership books, working
with people such as yourself, Danielle, to work on your
soft skills and your ability to run your business better.
If you're investing in yourself, the team is going to
(22:18):
feel it and you're just going to get better at
all of this. And a lot of people are focused
on AI as a solution for a lot of things
at this moment. But what I've found is that soft
skills and investing in empathy, and these things are giving
way higher ROI in the.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Long run, especially as clients are going to be pulled
in so many more directions, so many more directions. The
more that you can look them in the eyes, affirm
their humanity and the fact that you see them and
you care about them and you're going to help them
succeed in whatever challenges lie ahead. That is where you're
(22:59):
going to win a client for lives.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yep, yep. And what's great about winning their client for
life is that and I've built agencies on this, is
that person will go to another place and take you
with them, and they just got a promotion, and they
will take you. Then three years later they're taking you
to the next place and they just got a promotion
at that place. And each time the budget goes up
by at a zero to the end of your proposals.
(23:24):
I've seen it all over and over again. And those
people when you ask them like why do you like
working with us? And they're just like, I like working
with you. It's that simple. Like you could sit there
and quiz them all day long and be like, what
about it do you like? And they're like I don't know.
I just and what it comes back to you all
the way back to what you started with, Danielle, is
they trust you.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yep, they trust you. They feel and they feel like
it's better for them to keep working with you. One
of the firms I work with did some actual research
with their customer base and they asked, why do you
like working with the vendors that you choose to work with,
even if it's us, Why do you like working with
vendors that you use? And the recurring theme was that
(24:08):
those vendors knew how the client liked to work, and
the client knew how the vendor liked to work, and
so there was already an established way of doing things
that made it easier to keep pulling them into projects.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah. And I find that there are these waves of
things that happen within our industry where for years we've
talked about getting rid of the billable hour, Right, You've
got the book like Hourly Billing is Nuts. You've got
the David C. Bakers and the Blair Ends talking about
value based pricing. You've also got people talking about productization
(24:44):
in these places, and to my knowledge, nobody has unlocked
the absolute perfect model I think it always depends on
the types of people you're attracting. If you are only
attracting fang companies, if you're only working I know some
agencies that's all they work with is Apple, Netflix, Facebook,
that's their main clients. You're going to work and fit
(25:08):
into their model that they like to work with. But
if you are someone who mainly and I know a
young woman that runs a fantastic agency, all she does
is build websites for hvac companies and these people have
no clue what they're doing. So she has developed a
program and it is productized that she can then come
(25:29):
in and be like, here you go, here is your
website in a box basically, and they love it. They
love it. But you couldn't do that to a Netflix
or these other people. So I'd be careful when the
gurus out there are talking about you're doing it wrong.
You got to be listening to your clients. Just like
you said, it's good to go out and intake different
ideas and things, but your clients and your employees are
(25:52):
going to tell you what the right thing to do is.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Yep, practice those active listening skills exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So let's end here with a bit of advice, Danielle, Like,
where if you are working and somebody's listening right now
and they are concerned about lead generation and sales and
things like that going into twenty twenty five, what's some
advice or a perspective that you'd want to share with them.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
The biggest thing that I'm talking with people about right
now is to really focus on slowing down in order
to speed up and focus on one primary thing that's
going to get you from where you are now to
where you want to go. There's a lot of shiny
things out there that want to distract us, and there's
(26:39):
a lot of advice about this thing. Run this program,
do all of this, and work harder, do more. It's
that hospital culture that you refer to earlier, Kurt, and
that is literally killing us. And if you can slow down,
evaluate the biggest things that will drive impact, and then
table the rest, you will see positive results out of
(27:01):
that in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
I love that. I love that. I see it all
the time where people are like they're just overthinking all
these different things. I recently talked to a woman who's
a consultant, and we talked about offering a product from
her consultancy, and she's trying to think of all the
ways it executes and all the paperwork and all the thing.
(27:22):
I'm like, no, just go and offer it to see
if people want to buy HIT. Yep. You could certainly
come up with all the steps at all the details
about it later. But if you don't test and see
if people would actually be interested, all that work is
a waste.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yes, it is. You need to be more sales led
than your operations lead.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
One hundred percent, one hundred percent. Danielle, You're fantastic. I
can't wait to get you to come back on the show.
I love your perspective, I love your insights, and I
love the work you do. Speaking of if I want
to get in touch with you, if I want to
learn more about what you're doing, if I can follow
and gain more info from your insights, where do I go?
Where do I find out more?
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah? Back at your Kurt. Really appreciate you having me
on and we could probably talk for hours, but it's
y'all are interested in learning more, getting more perspectives. I'm
most active on LinkedIn, so you can follow me there
and you can message me there or you can email me.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's great. Yeah, I strongly suggest if you're listening, follow Danielle.
She's shares some really great stuff on LinkedIn and I
think you're going to get a You're going to you're
gonna get a lot out of it. So thank you again,
Danielle for your time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Thanks, Kurt, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
We appreciate you taking the time to listen to this
episode of schmidt List. The stories shared by our guests
are genuinely inspiring and offer insightful knowledge. It's important to
remember that success doesn't happen overnight and requires collaboration, learning,
and perseverance. If you want to broaden your professional connections,
(28:52):
check out Kurt's book, The Little Book of Networking, How
to Build your Career one Conversation at a Time on Amazon.
Please to day connected with all things schmidt List on
social media, leave a review for the podcast and join
our community of like minded entrepreneurs. Thank you for being
part of schmidt List. Keep innovating, collaborating, and chasing your
(29:12):
entrepreneurial dreams.
Hey, solopreneurs looking for a supportive community of like minded
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(00:22):
two hundred and twenty five dollars per month before twenty
twenty five. Visit Schmidt Consulting Dot group to learn more
and apply today. Don't build your business alone. We're excited
to have you join us.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Today's guest on Schmidt List is Danielle Fotau, a marketing
expert transforming agency revenue systems. She'll share insights on team
based lead generation, pandemic challenges, and building lasting client relationships.
Tune in for game changing strategies you won't want to miss.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Danielle, How are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Great, Kurt, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Thanks for coming. I'm so excited to hear because I
am excited to learn from you today. Tell me about
the work you do and who do you work with?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Sure so I work with marketing agencies, Performance marketing agencies,
Web deep shops, market research firms even so kind of
anything in that scope US in marketing to build their
revenue generation systems and refine their business development pipelines, and
a lot of the work that I do hinges on
this mindset that lead generation is a team sport, and
(01:31):
so you want to leverage the superpowers of everyone on
your team, fill the gaps with outside vendors, and really
build that powerful system that's going to be repeatable and
help you scale your agency in a resilient way.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Wow. Hey man, that's all I got to say to that.
Let's talk about some of the challenges that have been happening,
mainly over the last eighteen months that I've seen with
a lot of service providers, either in marketing or software development.
What are some of the changes you've seen from when
the pandemic is sort of slow down and where we
are at today. What challenges are people experiencing and what
(02:05):
are you seeing out there? M hm.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
The biggest challenge, and you and I were just talking
about this in the pre show, is both you and
I are seeing this need for people to actually fight
for business now and actually put into work. You actually
have to go out and generate demand for the services
that your agency provides. You have to be really strategic
in how you're positioning your brand to a specific audience
(02:28):
and solving a specific problem. And once you've get opportunities
in the door, it's not as easy to win. There's
more competition fighting for those dollars, So you really have
to deliver a value to them and make it super
clear upfront before that relationship begins. And then if you've
won the relationship, you've won the project. You build out
that scope of work and you start delivering on it.
(02:50):
You have to really up your game in relationship management
to retain those clients and keep them loyal to your agency.
So it's a three front battle, and it's something that
agencies aren't used to. If we think back to what
was going on a couple of years ago. So, Kerr,
are you seeing anything different? What would you add to that?
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I would agree one hundred thousand percent it is. It's
a very different world. A lot of people are focused
on what maybe worked five years ago, and they're very confused.
And so what I've seen a lot of people do
to your point in the last few months is try
to hit more easy buttons and not trying to get
back to it. So they'll hire a salesperson and then
(03:27):
that salesperson will last maybe a year, and then they
complained that they didn't bring in any work in and
but they're like, this is so confusing, this is I
don't understand. This is what salespeople do. I must have
just not hired a good salesperson. No, you probably didn't
set them up for success.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
And that's the thing. Let's press into that, Kurt, because
this mindset that a lot of agencies have had comes
out of a playbook that SaaS companies pushed down our
throats for years.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Oh yeah, ashtag hustle exactly.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Think about the playbook that SaaS companies to use. They
like to scale because they can. They're not a service model,
they're a product model, a digital product model at that,
so they don't have the same constraints that agencies do.
So they like to scale with really big programs and
advertising and a lot of the marketing work that they
(04:18):
do then and that they advocate, you do hinges on
those promotion channels, and that doesn't necessarily work for service providers,
which is what you are. Service providers have to look
at marketing through a lens of relationship building and trust
building marketing. If you look at it free digital marketing,
when the Internet exploded and everything changed, the core of
(04:40):
marketing is to build trusting relationships and we have to
get back to that if we want to win in
our businesses. Looking forward, yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
One hundred percent. I was talking with someone just a
couple weeks ago at a industry conference, and I told
them this is more like the mad Men days in
terms of market You've got to build a not just
you got to build trust, just like you said, but
you have to build almost an atmosphere around what you're doing.
That's got it. There's got to be a feeling to
(05:08):
it that I that gravity, the gravity that pulls people in,
not just a fancy logo and then a bunch of
people sitting around a whiteboard photo on your website, right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
And that gravity that you can build the atmosphere not
only pulls them in, but it keeps them there. They
stay in that sphere of influence that you have. And
one of the really interesting things that I've been having
more and more conversations with agencies about lately is their
customer experience. A lot of people they just were trying
(05:39):
to survive all of the projects and demands of the
last couple of years and everything changing operationally and even
just administrative changes that needed to happen. That they forgot
the need to really listen to their customers and respond
to their feedback and make sure that they're staying a
tuned to market demands. And a lot of that is
(06:00):
something that we need to get back to. There's this
concept of focusing on your accounts and in your marketing
and not just trying to do inbound marketing. I know
this kind of goes against the grain a little bit,
but doing all the inbound marketing as a service provider
is not going to work. It's part of the puzzle,
but it's not the full puzzle.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yeah, for sure. I just had this conversation too, not
too long ago, because back when I was running my
agency a few years ago, we spent a ton of
money on some cold outreach and we got nothing out
of it. And I was told over and over again
by these outside forces, right, and we see them and
agency owners that get them, you'll get these messages in
(06:44):
your LinkedIn inbox. Right, that's I'll get you sixty leads
a week, and you don't have to pay for anything
if they don't work out, and all these carrots that
are being dangled out there of look, just another easy
button is here for you. Just pay me and I'll
take care of it for you. But as you and
I both know, that's just not working in our industry.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Right, Yeah, absolutely not. There are no easy buttons. You
just have to get to face that reality. The hardest
things in life are the best things too. And I
like to think of it kind of on a scale
where you're measuring with time and up the y access
would be your commitment to something and being dedicated and
(07:26):
committed to a specific problem that you're solving per specific
kind of person in a very specific way. That commitment
level that you would carry through over time is what
is going to build the momentum that you need to
be positioned resiliently. And what do I even mean by
that word resilience. It's your ability to navigate the highs
and loans of a given market without your business having
(07:49):
to close its doors. Basically, in those low points, do
you want to have had built up enough reputation and
build up your cash savings to get you through those
tough seasons and have a service model that it stays
in demand even as the market shifts, even as new
technologies and marketing vehicles come and go. Your core is
(08:11):
what people will come back to. That's expertise that you
can provide to their problem and their specific marketplace.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, that makes sense because you see it all over
the place where there's just not a lot of I mean,
I remember when I was in school in college for
visual communications, and one of my professors asked, why don't
advertising companies advertise? And we're all They're like, what would
(08:39):
they say? What would they say? We're better than those guys.
We do more than those people do. And what I've
seen over the years and the ones that are doing
well these days are the people that are just focused
on outcomes. They're just focused on ROI and outcomes, that's
what they're talking about, versus a giant list of services
being menu of services on their website, their case studies
(09:01):
instead of saying about look at how bad this looked
before and look at how good it looks now. Like
that used to work, but it doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Because even creative departments have to measure up to ROIS now.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, they've got KPIs too, Yeah, and especially the bigger
the companies you're working with, the more stringent they're going
to be on that. I mean with you, if you're
working with small businesses, you could probably skirt by a
little bit. As it grows, they're going to be looking
and saying is this providing actual value? And what you
were seeing is, I mean, why do people hire a
(09:36):
marketing agency, for example, It's usually because their marketing agency,
their marketing group internally is probably too small to do
the work that needs to get done. They need more
hands on deck. But they're not going to just build
up a giant marketing team. But we saw a few
years ago a lot of people started really focusing on
building up their internal marketing teams and stop using outside resources.
(09:59):
And I think part of the layoffs that have happened
in the last eighteen months, you saw a lot of
marketing companies inside of companies get kind of gutted. And yeah,
so I'm seeing more and more of those opportunities, but
they're more choosy than they've ever been before. They're not
just looking at the agencies that have the nicest website.
(10:20):
What I've found with a lot of the places is
the people that are really showing off who they are,
and I mean not just in case studies, but in
the type of work they're doing in the community, like
what they're part of charities, or they're throwing events, or
they're sort of living their values in public. And I
(10:42):
find that those ones are getting much much more attention
than the people who are like, we're great crafts people,
so you should hire us.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
Yes. I think what you're saying, Kurt, is that people
clients are looking to hire agencies that are within their
existing ecosystem and that's from similar values.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Is that what you're saying, Yeah, that's one hundred percent.
I think that they don't want to just work with
the best. They want to work with people that are
going to make them look good too. Absolutely when it
comes to big firms, right, So like McKenzie. If if
I want, if I've got a multi billion dollar company
(11:23):
and I need it, I need to look good, I
tell people I'm bringing in McKenzie and just even saying
that can make your stock price go up.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yep. Yeah, it's And that consulting model is something that
I think agencies need to pay attention to.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
This is something that I think Kurt you've been saying
for years. I've been saying for years. If you don't
build up a team of people in your agency that
act as strategic advisors, you're going to get left behind.
And that's exactly what we have seen since the increased
use of AI and the shift of internal resources to
be more in house. That's exactly what we're seeing. The
(12:02):
agencies that have built out advisors, they're winning way more
than the smaller shops that just want to do a thing.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yes, yes, exactly. And the problem that I find is
that because the owner or the owners or partners have
had to carry things on their back for so long,
they kind of are just stuck in that mode that
it's all up to me. At the end of the day,
I got to pay everybody's salaries. I can't rely on anybody,
so I just rely on myself. And then they don't
(12:31):
realize how many blind spots that they.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Have and why are they even in that position to
begin with? We have to ask that question, if we're
going to move forward and build something better than the
way that it is today, why is all of the
weight on the owner's shoulders. Why isn't the team picking
up of some of the weight where are people slacking
in some of the responsibilities that could help drive the
(12:55):
agency's business development pipeline forward. Project manners are a great
example all of this. They are on the front line
to how a project goes and a person's willingness to
do more projects with your firm. Account managers are easier
to understand because they are handing the client relationship, but
they're often not equipped and given the support that they
(13:17):
need to actually succeed in generating more demand from that
client and capturing that demand in a way that is
actually a benefit to them as well. So we have
to ask the question why is it broken? Is it
broken because we haven't designed it to work? And what
do we need to do to change the design so
that it does work.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Yeah, I love that you brought that up, because what
we end up doing is we're following some sort of
business model that is based off of a different type
of business than what we're running In an agency, everybody
is a salesperson and to your point, the project manager
if they're not incentivized in the right way there. I
(14:02):
used to work at an agency where the project managers
were incentivized to get stuff done on time, on budget.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
That's what they were in efficiently, So sometimes they would
cut corners.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, they would cut corners and they would close the product.
They would try to run to the end as fast
as possible so I can close out the project and
be done with it and then it's over. And that
didn't work for when you wanted to build relationship with
the client and add on, it worked for what they
were in, but that's what they were incentivized for. They
were incentivized to finish the project and finish it on time,
(14:36):
on budget, which again you want that, right, but you
also want that client to think what else could we
be doing together? And it's and if you leave it
just up to the client to come up with those ideas,
that's not a partnership.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
You're a vendor, no, and they will view you as
a vendor and they will get frustrated and they will
that's much more. Yes, look for someone that is actually
a strategic advisor to them because they want to know
what else they could be doing. Because when an agency
can provide that insight, they look better to their leadership
as well.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, and I think you hit the nail on the
head is that you've got to build a culture like
that inside the organization as the leader to saying we're
all in the sales boat here. At my last agency,
I mean, we gave a big bonus. Anybody who brought
in a referral that signed, you got a bunch of
(15:29):
money and you didn't have to do anything. But every
employee was able to get that. And we had a
bunch that would bring in referrals all the time and
it worked great, and it wasn't that And I've heard
arguments from other owners saying I don't want to distract
the team, and I'm like.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I think, I think that is a cop out. If
I'm being honest, There's there is so much much hidden
potential if you can properly communicate to your team that
they should be as invested in building these relationships and
(16:10):
identifying opportunities with clients and then give them the support
structure to actually go out and win the business and
then the benefits alongside the agency for that too. There
is so much hidden potential there, and it's a cop
out to say that people would get distracted because if
they're focusing on delighting a customer so that they keep
(16:31):
coming back, and if they're focusing on bringing a new business.
They're focusing on it exactly the right things.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yeah, it's a choice that people make when they join
an agency. I mean, you're going to be most likely
client facing at some point, and so if you're hiring
people that don't want to be client facing, you're kind
of setting yourself and them up for failure. And so
knowing that if you are hiring those people, then to
your point, Daniel, you've got to give them the support
(16:59):
and the tools in order to be successful, because maybe
they can only take an opportunity so far, but they
need to know when they can pull like the cord
and get an account person or a founder or somebody
into the next conversation. Hey, you should come to our
next meaning because the client's asking for some potential things.
(17:20):
But I remember at agencies years and years ago, you'd
hear about that after the fact, because that wasn't their
job was to listen to. They'd be like, okay, cool, yeah,
let us know how that goes.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yes, oh my gosh, my heart just melted.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
H Yeah, yep, but if you but again, it's a
culture thing. It's not even just a process thing. I
know some people, especially in engineering, founded companies that can
be overly processed driven. And but there's certain things in
our business like you just can't measure I'm sorry engineers
out there, you can't measure everything. And people say, if
(17:58):
I can't measure it, I can't manage it. Like there's
some things you just can't manage. There's some things you
just need to watch.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
M Yeah, there is going to be a level of
present for yeah, yeah, and show up for it. Showing
up is half the battle most of the time. Can
we talk about the other elephant in the room on
this pleasure, which is the fact that there are a
lot of team members that would be much more effective
if you help to develop to their relationship building skills,
(18:25):
their emotional intelligence, their soft skills that if you as
a leader, as an owner, a partner, as a leadership team,
if you can proactively find ways to pour into them
and develop their skill sets in those arenas, they will
do a lot better, even if you don't set up
anything else. If that's even just one thing that they
(18:48):
will automatically do better. Ideally you would be doing both.
But that's another component here.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, And if you've got if you've got a team,
and maybe there's downtime there's always time to grow, so
you need to have things in place for when maybe
work there's a break in work, or these things where
people can focus on continuing to grow. Because when they're
working on projects, everybody's happy, right, you're billing, they're growing
(19:14):
because of the work that they're doing, the business is growing.
It's all great. But then when there's benchtime or other things,
a lot of people just kind of I don't know, well, yeah,
go sit down on some meetings or things. But at
some of the agencies where I've worked at, where they
had these things that would immediately engage. Here's this course
that you should start taking or you should finish from
(19:36):
the last time you were on the bench. Here's this
book that we bought for you to read, and here's this.
It immediately goes into the next phase where they are
continuing to learn how to grow. And to your point,
if those things are designed in a way to build
those soft skills to help them learn more about how
(19:58):
the business functions, because I know I've beat up on
engineers a little bit here, but designers, a lot of
them don't even know how the place makes money. In
a lot of cases, the hill, they're like I don't know.
I make stuff and more is more right. And no,
I can't tell you how many times I've had to
take the crayons away and be like, no, stop working,
we're goods.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
Yes. Setting those boundaries and educating the team on how
to win as an agency with their help is so important,
And I love talking through what opportunities would be to
build in time for specific roles. If you think about
even just allocating ten percent of every single person's time
(20:40):
towards your agency's business development efforts and revenue generation efforts,
that's about four hours a week, half a day, and
you can make so much progress with just that little change,
and most of the time people won't seal it very
much in their actual workload, and they actually get to
collaborate on something new and exciting as a team together,
(21:01):
which can boost morale. It can improve the way that
you're engaging their ideas as well, which is always a
positive thing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yeah, And to be honest, I'm just gonna this might
be a hot take, but if those things don't get
you excited as an owner and those creating those opportunities
and then being able to buffer and pay be able
to pay for those things, you just shouldn't have full
time employees. Oh, you should just go to the contractor model,
because unless you're excited to lead people, grow people and
(21:32):
do the work and do the business, there's just no
reason for you to have employees. That's a really good
point because there if you just look at them as
sort of a means to an end and a thing
that a sponge to squeeze more out of. You should
just go to the contractor model. You'll be much happier,
you'll enjoy it much more, and you won't leave a
streak of decimation in your path as you grow and
(21:56):
build your business of people who hate who go out
there and talk about what terrible experience it was working there.
And that takes time because and that's where I think
finding leadership groups, taking leadership courses, reading leadership books, working
with people such as yourself, Danielle, to work on your
soft skills and your ability to run your business better.
If you're investing in yourself, the team is going to
(22:18):
feel it and you're just going to get better at
all of this. And a lot of people are focused
on AI as a solution for a lot of things
at this moment. But what I've found is that soft
skills and investing in empathy, and these things are giving
way higher ROI in the.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Long run, especially as clients are going to be pulled
in so many more directions, so many more directions. The
more that you can look them in the eyes, affirm
their humanity and the fact that you see them and
you care about them and you're going to help them
succeed in whatever challenges lie ahead. That is where you're
(22:59):
going to win a client for lives.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yep, yep. And what's great about winning their client for
life is that and I've built agencies on this, is
that person will go to another place and take you
with them, and they just got a promotion, and they
will take you. Then three years later they're taking you
to the next place and they just got a promotion
at that place. And each time the budget goes up
by at a zero to the end of your proposals.
(23:24):
I've seen it all over and over again. And those
people when you ask them like why do you like
working with us? And they're just like, I like working
with you. It's that simple. Like you could sit there
and quiz them all day long and be like, what
about it do you like? And they're like I don't know.
I just and what it comes back to you all
the way back to what you started with, Danielle, is
they trust you.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yep, they trust you. They feel and they feel like
it's better for them to keep working with you. One
of the firms I work with did some actual research
with their customer base and they asked, why do you
like working with the vendors that you choose to work with,
even if it's us, Why do you like working with
vendors that you use? And the recurring theme was that
(24:08):
those vendors knew how the client liked to work, and
the client knew how the vendor liked to work, and
so there was already an established way of doing things
that made it easier to keep pulling them into projects.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah. And I find that there are these waves of
things that happen within our industry where for years we've
talked about getting rid of the billable hour, Right, You've
got the book like Hourly Billing is Nuts. You've got
the David C. Bakers and the Blair Ends talking about
value based pricing. You've also got people talking about productization
(24:44):
in these places, and to my knowledge, nobody has unlocked
the absolute perfect model I think it always depends on
the types of people you're attracting. If you are only
attracting fang companies, if you're only working I know some
agencies that's all they work with is Apple, Netflix, Facebook,
that's their main clients. You're going to work and fit
(25:08):
into their model that they like to work with. But
if you are someone who mainly and I know a
young woman that runs a fantastic agency, all she does
is build websites for hvac companies and these people have
no clue what they're doing. So she has developed a
program and it is productized that she can then come
(25:29):
in and be like, here you go, here is your
website in a box basically, and they love it. They
love it. But you couldn't do that to a Netflix
or these other people. So I'd be careful when the
gurus out there are talking about you're doing it wrong.
You got to be listening to your clients. Just like
you said, it's good to go out and intake different
ideas and things, but your clients and your employees are
(25:52):
going to tell you what the right thing to do is.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Yep, practice those active listening skills exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So let's end here with a bit of advice, Danielle, Like,
where if you are working and somebody's listening right now
and they are concerned about lead generation and sales and
things like that going into twenty twenty five, what's some
advice or a perspective that you'd want to share with them.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
The biggest thing that I'm talking with people about right
now is to really focus on slowing down in order
to speed up and focus on one primary thing that's
going to get you from where you are now to
where you want to go. There's a lot of shiny
things out there that want to distract us, and there's
(26:39):
a lot of advice about this thing. Run this program,
do all of this, and work harder, do more. It's
that hospital culture that you refer to earlier, Kurt, and
that is literally killing us. And if you can slow down,
evaluate the biggest things that will drive impact, and then
table the rest, you will see positive results out of
(27:01):
that in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
I love that. I love that. I see it all
the time where people are like they're just overthinking all
these different things. I recently talked to a woman who's
a consultant, and we talked about offering a product from
her consultancy, and she's trying to think of all the
ways it executes and all the paperwork and all the thing.
(27:22):
I'm like, no, just go and offer it to see
if people want to buy HIT. Yep. You could certainly
come up with all the steps at all the details
about it later. But if you don't test and see
if people would actually be interested, all that work is
a waste.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Yes, it is. You need to be more sales led
than your operations lead.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
One hundred percent, one hundred percent. Danielle, You're fantastic. I
can't wait to get you to come back on the show.
I love your perspective, I love your insights, and I
love the work you do. Speaking of if I want
to get in touch with you, if I want to
learn more about what you're doing, if I can follow
and gain more info from your insights, where do I go?
Where do I find out more?
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah? Back at your Kurt. Really appreciate you having me
on and we could probably talk for hours, but it's
y'all are interested in learning more, getting more perspectives. I'm
most active on LinkedIn, so you can follow me there
and you can message me there or you can email me.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's great. Yeah, I strongly suggest if you're listening, follow Danielle.
She's shares some really great stuff on LinkedIn and I
think you're going to get a You're going to you're
gonna get a lot out of it. So thank you again,
Danielle for your time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Thanks, Kurt, appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
We appreciate you taking the time to listen to this
episode of schmidt List. The stories shared by our guests
are genuinely inspiring and offer insightful knowledge. It's important to
remember that success doesn't happen overnight and requires collaboration, learning,
and perseverance. If you want to broaden your professional connections,
(28:52):
check out Kurt's book, The Little Book of Networking, How
to Build your Career one Conversation at a Time on Amazon.
Please to day connected with all things schmidt List on
social media, leave a review for the podcast and join
our community of like minded entrepreneurs. Thank you for being
part of schmidt List. Keep innovating, collaborating, and chasing your
(29:12):
entrepreneurial dreams.
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