How To Sign $10k/pm Agency Deals (Client Interview)

[Music] cool so guys welcome back to the channel I am sat with Mona Patel that wonderful talk so do you want to seduce yourself sure I'm the CEO of motivate design it's a user experience research and design agency here in New York City do you want to tell them some of your clientele sure we get to work with some pretty awesome brands I have to say I'm very I feel very fortunate so Nike and Facebook a bunch of banks like First Republic Bank a bunch of pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and itsuka some cool brands like

refinery29 or tumblr like jet it's it's a really fun group she loves her job I do I do um so enemies motivate design is why we're here so I'm here doing a two day training for amazing trainees on you Ramona and and the rest of our team so yeah we're doing a two day training and I think a little while back like three four months ago I sat down with owner of AJ smart Johnson Courtney um and I kinda I'm like yo dude like can we shoot a video on what he you know what you're

looking for when you're signing agencies to do work for your company when you're signing contractors copywriters email marketers if your designers whatever it may be because obviously I you know my main thing is I teach people how to start a digital marketing agency so I thought how awesome would it be to sit with one of my own clients and just kind of discuss like you know things you can do in either your sales approach your pitch I'm sure whatever it may be to actually kind of you know help help you land higher to get clients

and finds brands like this basically so um yeah okay what do I start yeah okay so what is what are like alright because basically Mona's like one of the most straight to-the-point people you everyday she's got like you gotta find two days very very blunt so what are like some good because I remember hearing in one of the podcasts like you've had people come to you like asking for jobs or agencies and stuff like that like what are some things when or what's an approach that someone would take when they come to you that you're

just immediately like no when they think they know what my problem is I mean I think that that's a thing and maybe it's just me but one big trigger that I have is disrespect and disrespect shows up in a variety of ways it shows up in not doing homework on this company not doing homework on me having a lot of assumptions about what I need or how I need it versus listening universes coming in saying Moana I've listened to a couple of podcasts I looked at your website I have I think I know where I'd

be a great fit but I would love to learn from you what are your pain points when it comes to digital marketing what are the things that you wish like you could just wake up and someone would solve for you start they're the ones that come in or like I know where all the mistakes are I just had one the other day it's like I look to your website I found 14 things wrong with it I'm like okay I know yeah like how is that helpful to me I don't want to work with somebody without

kind of attitude I want to work with somebody who's like I'm here to help you I'm here to be your partner and take a whole lot of work off of your plate so that you can be more successful and that's what I'm looking for it's like your word your sentiment your attitude has to be like I'm here to help you because this is what I do like how I have those clients is I say I'm here to help you what do you need what's your budget whatever their budget is would work with that you know

do I need to come on-site off-site look what is it that you need me to do to make you successful people love that but all too often we'll get people who just think they know or they have this like package offering they're like this this or this and I don't I don't resonate so that's something that like I'm a big big advocate against well first of all I've had it with for example customers of mine of my of my program you know they'll ask in the live Q&A calls that we do they're like I remember

one specifically the guy was like hey how do I make my meetings quicker yeah they're like how do I make my meetings quicker or how do I like make my meetings more efficient and I'm like dude that is the opposite of what you want I told him I'm like look people commit to this - there's two forms of commitment you can either get a monetary commitment which is the sale or which is something that most people glaze over is a time commitment now for someone like you and and that's why I like if a client

wants to spew out all of their issues and all their problems to me for an hour and I literally don't say a word for an hour I'm like I'm getting closer and closer to the sale because I can tell you something someone like Mona or another business owner or for example someone like me like art I'm like you know like you know like people say like oh you know my time is worth more than money but like but it actually it's worth more than money to us right so if you're sitting with a business owner

and you know you're trying to like speed up the sales process and say like though look there is a there's a there's a like a flow and there's a there's a you know a syrup process you have to go through to get to the sale or the clothes or get them to become a client of yours but that's it if you're trying to like speed it up and go through like every single point you're actually doing yourself a disservice huge because the more time someone spends with you the more likely they're gonna become a clown

I think for sure I think the other thing but it's money and time in my time like to be would be residents value residents right so I may not have the money to hire you right now you may not be in my budget right now like for example we're talking videographers earlier today right there's this guy I really like he's over budget for what we decided we needed yeah the time that he spent with me and the time that he spent explaining to me he got my project he understood it he had his own perspective

on it I will always remember him and if I have a bigger budget if I have been another need if I have a referral that I need to make he's gonna get that yeah and he did try to rush me he didn't try to like sell me on anything he's like this is what I do this is my rate the rate didn't work out for us that's okay it was a matter of him at some point and this is what I've learned in business for the last like nine and a half years now there's there's

business Karma you know you help somebody and you're so surprised but like it could be five years it could be five days that person helps you back yeah even you you don't use it's so weird literally right before shooting this I got I got a really big referral yeah I was just like and this is a this is like a old like business associate of mine like a deal that didn't work out and this is like from like a year and a half ago and really like I'm like they thought him you know like you

don't realize the Karma there you know one of our one of the people who leads up insider insight she's a strategist she teaches at Parsons one of our employees introduced me to her and it was about a year and a half ago maybe two years ago and we didn't have the role for her and we didn't have the ability to pay a rate for someone who's a strategist we had like really basic work that we were doing and she was kind of too smart for the work that we were doing she leads up insider insight

now I called her the second we came up with this idea and I'm like I know who is gonna be perfect so you you really don't know and that's the thing it's like if you're in this business and you're just focusing on time and money for you you're not gonna make it I'm sorry like maybe you will like as a giant educate but if you're here to say like what I do is valuable so I got to find the clients who see that value and I'm going to spend the time and effort to really do

some stellar work like there's no shortage of work it really is no short work I've been around he knows like I don't even have a sales process I can tell you now I do but like you know prior to 48 hours ago it was it was no not really is it just like we did great work and everything was referral I'm working out every single thing from growing this agency to almost 50 people was just word-of-mouth referral and there was packages yeah so that's another thing that it's like really kills me is like I always

tell people like don't do packages don't do packages and also your pricing should be different per client like yeah so I I don't know if that would be my type or clients client type yeah i client type me I don't know I don't know if that will work for your industry but at least in my space I know how much it's worth and I also know how much work that goes in so depending on that I'll charge a different price and also it's like if you go to a doctor right if you go to a

doctor and they're just like take this medicine you're like I haven't told you what my issue is right and I like yeah I just you just be like this person's just out to like give me scammy or like messin for me or just like take my money and they just don't or if you go to like a pharmacy or something they're just like take this mess and you're like I haven't told you what's wrong you just want your money you know there's like I'm realizing something edges that there's a desperation in doing that that I

think what I like what you're like man you know like you don't you know you're not listening you're not paying attention try to get out of here early there's a desperation that you pick up on when you're trying to hire and you don't want to show signs of that I want to show strength confidence that you're you know that you feel really good about the package that you have but of course you're flexible if they need them to be you know you need to be flexible or you can just walk away and say I'm sorry

this isn't for me right now but in the future we can work together yeah and there's a there's also just a client I got an email like two three hours ago that I confer like a client confirmation and there 7800 month yeah they tried to push back then like hey can we go to 5,000 or no they were like hey can we go to 5,000 yeah 5,000 I'm like no no and then I like hey can you go to 6,500 Plus this they want to give me shares of their company I'll tell you off camera

who it is and I'm like no and I'm like okay awesome yeah with a 7,500 and it's just there's also like a lot of strength that comes with that like kind of knowing your price being able to walk away when need be and also that strength only comes from when you know that is the like like it's really easy to walk away when you know that's what they need yeah they may not see it at the time but they'll come to see it yeah for example Jonathan right Jonathan from AJ smart and you guys actually

know him cuz I go I'm on camera like from the moment that he saw my ad cuz he actually came through a funnel from the moment he saw my ad to the point that he became a customer or a client of mine was six months he didn't know that he needed it at that time but he had six months later and if you can like be solid in your offering and I have to give people time to come to you right it's like dating then you have to give people time to like come to you

don't just go strong with like let's get marry the second that you meet somebody you give him the Kievan Jonathan so Jonathan introduced us it was I think at the end of the summer it took me two months yeah this you know shorter because I have his recommendation but it's not to vet talk to you get Peter talk to you later there's all these things that have to happen as a part of the day and so you have to respect that process yeah now one thing that I would say is usually this is Winnick like

the higher ticket yeah yeah the higher ticket stuff like to be honest there are clients which are you know I charge four or five six thousand pounds a month too and it's literally it's for Facebook ads yeah and it's literally like on the spot like we'll do the call on the spot like awesome send you the onboarding process invoice you and like that's it they're crying and like I'll close the deal within thirty minutes because that may just be the nature of it yeah another thing is that another thing with higher ticket clients were it's

not necessary to your clients I have for example an agency like this you know a deal it isn't not going through because they don't want to it's because there's genuinely people that have to be like this vetting and you can't get frustrated at that yeah so for example one thing that I'm against is proposals like you know this with like feeder like I don't I won't send a proposal ever like I'm like because because I'm like what could be in a proposal that we can't just talk about right now like you know so I won't

send a proposal that said I sent a loom to Peter you know the president and right yeah motivate design I sent a loom to Peter I'm like hey Peter here's the loom which basically just like a video thing it's pretty cool yeah yeah I liked it yeah have you checked it out thank you Mike did you use it I want to use it you use loom because here's the thing you know you don't have to like export and upload it's available straight away nice it is so awesome internally I use the iPad at America i

pair with slack it's awesome anyways so I just sent him a loom and I said hey share this with the rest of your team because a company like this I understand that the sale didn't go through not because like Mona Dave wanted or Peter didn't want it it's January there has to be vetting I think you've been my email back to was like I like you now next step yeah keep going you know like yeah on to the next person you have to convince on to the next person I mean think of it this way

like an agency like this it's usually three people two people my world is like sometimes 25 people a room that needs all agree all means kind of like a chill and like assume that it's gonna get there yeah and then it's gonna take a little longer yeah so huge pet peeves are when they try to rush you when they try to assume what you know yeah oh come on prepared so can you like touch on that a little bit yeah I mean I've actually had people say so like how long have you been around what

is it exactly that you do here my favorite was after after 40 minutes with me they're like so what's your role at motivate but you're never gonna get hired and it's so sloppy like you think that people don't do it but you guys know it sometimes like you forget you're on social yeah you haven't done a proper move and then you go to a meeting we know we do don't make it an obvious thing we don't make you feel dumb about it but like I do talk about it after I'm like that dude seriously yeah

you know and off they go and that's where contractors it's for new hires it's for you know a lot of things I think the other pet peeve would be when you don't know something just say I don't know you know a large part of what why I use contractors or agency versus adding somebody full-time internally is like I want their their entrepreneurial spirit I want their fresh perspective I want something that they've done in the past to be applied most of the time it's for to do something new and innovative right otherwise I could just

hire somebody is like if I needed another admin I would just hire another admin yeah but if I need like a head of insider insight or a head of like social media marketing I want to find somebody who has like a perspective and a and a process that I that I buy into so I'm probably gonna ask you questions that's W like we had a beauty P conversation you're like maybe this maybe that I don't know that's my favorite thing actually to have someone who's raw who's like I've never done this cuz that's why I

hired you but I think we should do it this way mm-hmm versus someone who's like well I've never done this and then that sadness or like I'm just gonna take what I know and apply instead of like stop yeah rather than assessing the situation or asking like what's the context in which this is yea cabal etc except so you need to have like a humility around your expertise yeah I guess it's the best way I would say that like be confident know what you know but then especially when you get like that's juicy project that

one no you've never done before you know be clear like I haven't done this which is why it's exciting why I'm here why you know maybe I have a more competitive rate but here's how I'm thinking about it because by the way I can't scale your thinking you'll always be there with me you know I've contractors we've worked here for like four years because I like the way they think and so I'm happy with it you know they want to like take summers off or whatever it is like we do that okay so yeah we've

covered things that people do wrong aha is there just like at least like one thing where you see it and you're like okay yeah this person like immediately standouts from this you know if you exclude their expertise their prior expertise their CV whatever you use a metric yeah if there's just one thing you see I'm going I'm tying between two so I'm just think I'll give you both and I'll talk to you through which one so one the first answer that given you is preparation like just come in polish Dec print out whatever it is

that you need to actually like do that but the other is I have hire people who just wanted it you know when it comes down to two candidates and one person has followed up properly followed up you know with it with a really compelling not like thanks it was nice to meet you but I'll see you soon but like things you got me thinking about this that and the other here's an article about this here's a you know whatever about that here's a case study that came to me after that person has an edge and

when it comes down to two people I picked that person yeah always like I know they want it for you and the best part is that person's memorable even if you don't hire them at that moment coming at ya that agency that contract or whatever maybe even if you don't hire them at that moment it's because they had they just wore native more yeah right and they stayed in the game like a lot of I though it just will you know kind of summarize that like I think just a lot of people like eject from

that yeah they don't like the rejections and yeah they'll just like ya know just like they'll leave the game too early you just should've just stayed in the game you should have stayed in the conversation right and you don't need to do in a she way or anything no no no yeah no and I think what you said is like you know just respect the product there's processes that happen when you're not there like respect that and they'll come back to you they have a have it but those are like and assuming that you know

like the knowledge and the expertise is all there obviously like you know you can want it as much as you want to but you're done sucking right but like you know assuming that all that's there the person that we take is the person that clearly wants it they have the the drive and the desire and you see it in their face you see it and like things I see in their eyes you can see it in their eyes you can see it and how quickly they follow up you can see it in whether they write

typos when they follow on you know like whether this is a sloppy thing that they did like all of that I think is is who we're looking for all right awesome well as I hope you enjoyed that yeah and yeah thank you so much you got into you all right awesome I'm telling you you like such a natural