How to Fix the Problems Between Owners and Agencies

Chad Lauer [00:00:00]:
Somebody will purchase a digital marketing product or service, say SEO, and an agency will get them to the first page and they’ll be like, but how did you do it? You need to show me how you did it. 

Jeffro [00:00:19]:
Welcome back to digital dominance. As industries grow and mature, clients get more and more options. Products and services launched to make your life easier and in some cases, done for you services become available as well. Digital marketing is no different and we’ve seen many agencies offering done with you and done for you services. These can be very appealing because digital marketing can get pretty complicated, especially if it isn’t your main focus. But while many agencies promise the world, many don’t deliver on their promises. And that’s unfortunate because it creates a bad reputation that bleeds over onto the agencies that do keep their promises. And many business owners who got burned feel like they can never take that chance again.

Jeffro [00:00:58]:
Today’s episode will be all about b two b sales as a service, what to look out for, when to hire out, how to keep your agency accountable, and so on. I’m joined by Chad Lauer, the founder and president of Lauer media company. When I first read Chad’s story, it really resonated with me because dependability is something that he strives for with his company. And while he now runs his own digital marketing company, he was previously employed by at T Interactive, which is the owner of yellowpages.com, where he gained valuable insights into the successful operations of North America’s most prominent digital marketing agency. So welcome to the show, Chad, and thanks for being here.

Chad Lauer [00:01:34]:
Yeah, Jeff Row, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to join you today.

Jeffro [00:01:38]:
Yeah, Chad, one of the things that frustrates me about digital marketing is that so many business owners have gotten screwed over by agencies that didn’t deliver, didn’t care and left businesses in a worse place than when they started. And one of the things I tell people about Frobro is that I try to bring the resources of a large agency together with the personalization and attention that you get from a small agency. It sounds like you’ve been able to accomplish something similar over at Lauer media.

Chad Lauer [00:02:01]:
Yeah, and I think it really goes to the root cause of why does that happen. And I think it comes from large agencies trying to scale with sales reps and a quota driven culture where it’s like, hey, you need to hit your quota or else you’re kind of out of here. Right? So it just sets us up for failure where some of the boutique agencies that maybe aren’t as large create more of that personal relationship where they’re like, hey, we literally want to be on the same side of the table as you. More of a consultant approach, because, listen, this is our baby, too. Right. So I think when we’re a similar SMB or small to medium sized business owner, we tend to want to grow together as opposed to just that what’s in it for me type of transaction. Some of those sales structures, too, are set up with hunters and farmers. So you’ll have one person who’s paid just to sell, and then they pass it to somebody else.

Chad Lauer [00:02:53]:
And that’s not really conducive for success. Right. You want to be able to kind of hold that customer’s hand from the point of sale into out the relationship where if somebody’s just being paid to sell and then onto the next one, they don’t always have the client’s best interest at heart, per se.

Jeffro [00:03:13]:
Right. Well, I like that you pointed out part of the problem is the culture or the structure of that company and the way they’re doing things. So it’s not necessarily that they’re out to screw people over. It’s just that they didn’t do it right. And so they’re missing the mark. Obviously, there’s going to be some shady agencies out there that just want to lock you into a retainer and then tell you, oh, yeah, campaign is going great. We’ll check back next month. But I think that’s the exception.

Jeffro [00:03:37]:
Personally, I think most of the time, even with some of the smaller agencies, there’s a couple of other main problems. So there’s either a disconnect between expectations and reality, meaning the client wants new revenue. Yesterday, the campaign has barely been warmed up and optimized, and so they give up too quickly and blame the agency. That’s one problem. And another scenario, maybe the agency is just hyper focused on their own metrics and they think they’re doing a good job because. All right, well, the click through rate is in our target range, but the business owner doesn’t care about the click through rate. They care about getting new customers. So then they blame the agency.

Jeffro [00:04:09]:
And I guess there’s a third possibility, which is that failed for other reasons. Maybe the agency made a promise they thought they could keep, but then they had personnel issues or cash flow or whatever. But the point is, tell me your thoughts on that. I know that’s kind of a lot I threw at you right there.

Chad Lauer [00:04:20]:
Yes. So this is a really deep question, and I have very strong opinions on this. Number one, every industry has bad apples right? This is a home services podcast, right? There’s bad roofers, there’s bad landscape services, there’s bad doctors, there’s bad dentists that don’t do what’s right day in and day out. So that’s number one. I joke about it, and I don’t know why. In our industry, it’s a thing, and I fought it. I’ve been in this industry sitting with small to medium sized business owners my entire career. For 16 years, every day I’m on or in meetings with SMBs.

Chad Lauer [00:04:56]:
So about two years ago, I went down this rabbit hole of, why does this happen in our industry? I didn’t even tell you guys yet what I’m talking about, but somebody will purchase a digital marketing product or service, say SEO, and an agency will get them to the first page and they’ll be like, but how did you do it? You need to show me how you did it. And then there becomes this point of contention because they feel like they need to know how an agency got them to where they need to be. And we used to say, hey, that’s our secret sauce. If you’re a dentist and you do a cavity, does the patient come out of the chair and say, all right, doc, show me how you filled my cavity? No, your tooth is filled. And you go on with your day. If you go get your car fixed and the car wasn’t working and now it’s working, do you say, hey, auto repair mechanic, you need to now go under the hood and show me how you fix my car? No, you don’t. You say, thank you for fixing my car, and you get on with it. For some reason, over the last 20 years, people need to know how digital marketing agencies do what they do.

Chad Lauer [00:06:09]:
And I don’t understand for the life of me where that came from. Right. Just because you can do something yourself doesn’t mean you should demand it. So I’ll give you another example. Right? So if my toilet broke, I could probably fix it, right? It would take me all weekend, and it still wouldn’t be fixed properly. So is my best time spent going and fixing my toilet all weekend? No. Why plumbers, pest control, roofers, et cetera, want to do that? I still don’t understand, and I’m just throwing out there. So I’m giving you the agency side and the SMB side, and this has been a point of contention for all time.

Chad Lauer [00:06:50]:
So here’s what we decided to do at lower media. We said, listen, we are going to share a status report of every single thing we do for you with every single product, and you’re not going to know what 90% of it means, but you’re going to go in there and you’re going to see that it’s been done and there’s going to be a link where you can verify that it’s been done. And that transparency to me has solved that issue. Now, even though I fought it for however many years, in the last two years since we did that, those contentious conversations have significantly dropped. So I think it’s all about like, they don’t tangibly see what digital marketing agencies are doing and there’s this lack of trust then that comes from that. And there’s digital marketing agencies that don’t do what they’re supposed to do. Same thing like there’s auto repair mechanics who don’t fix the car properly. Right? There’s every industry you can go through and see those.

Chad Lauer [00:07:47]:
So it’s really just a long winded answer. But it’s about creating trust and being transparent. And I think that will solve the contentious problem between SMBs and digital marketing agencies. And if that agency is not willing to give you a month to month agreement, why? If that agency is not willing to show you what they did, why? Right. So just ask those questions. And I think it will help solve a lot of the SMB headaches that happen when dealing with digital marketing agencies.

Jeffro [00:08:19]:
I think you hit it on the head. It’s about not being tangible, right? In a dentist chair, you can feel that he’s doing stuff in your mouth. You can see the tools he’s bringing over. And then the guy’s fixing your toilet, you can look over his shoulder if you want. He’s pulling out his tools, he’s disconnecting this replacing. You can kind of see what’s happening even if you don’t understand all of it. You know, he did stuff. Whereas with digital marketing, if you don’t hear anything from a couple of weeks and then suddenly, hey, we’re done.

Jeffro [00:08:42]:
Well, that’s great. What magic levers did you pull? And so I like that you give that report of step by step, like, here’s what we did, here’s what we changed, then they can at least know that, okay, you did stuff that makes sense, I’ll buy that. And they feel like they’re more in the loop. It’s no longer a black box. We don’t like black boxes. We want to know what’s happening.

Chad Lauer [00:09:00]:
No, and here’s the other thing. There are tools and technologies that we use at loud media. We use third parties, too. We’re very transparent about. We’ll use call tracking metrics, and that tells you the source of the phone call. We track form fills. Where did that source of that traffic come from? Was that a lead from social media? Was that a lead from SEO? Was that a lead from a paid ad? And then at least the tangible thing is the phone call or the inquiry, or in an ecommerce situation, it’s a sale, which also has analytics tracked to track that shows where the source of that sale came from. So I think that’s the other thing is sometimes clients will fight you on those tools.

Chad Lauer [00:09:40]:
They’ll be, ah, it’s big brother. I don’t want a different phone number. I don’t want this. But I think we need to reiterate as agencies that these tools are available to show you tangible results. That’s the other thing that I think a lot of agencies struggle with, is they don’t lead the client enough to say, hey, I think you need this, and here’s why. I don’t want you to spend 2000 a month and not have tracking mechanisms in place, or we’re going to be at this place that we’re talking about today, Jeffrey.

Jeffro [00:10:08]:
And I think there’s a couple more aspects of this I kind of want to get into. So obviously, I think both sides have a role in this, in making this better. So we’ve talked about one way the agency side can make it a little better with providing that transparency. But I think the business owner also needs to understand what’s happening in their campaigns and also where marketing ends and where sales begins. And a lot of time the agency did their job, says, here’s your lead. Now it’s up to the business owner or his team to close that sale, right? And if you’re not making the sales, you can’t go blame the agency because they didn’t do their job. They did. So I think that’s another part of it.

Chad Lauer [00:10:42]:
And that’s where I think we’re different. I tell everybody I’m just a dumb sales guy, right? I am the owner of the business. I can sell. I can go get clients. I don’t code myself. I can if I need to, but I don’t. My business has scaled. I don’t design.

Chad Lauer [00:10:57]:
I don’t do the social media posts. I’m a leader, right? So what I do is I like to get into that big picture stuff. Like, okay, we got you 20 leads. And then I go in and I listen to the calls and they’re fumbled. So now you need to pay us to come train you on how to sell, which, again, to your point, is totally different. And that’s where, in the b to b space, we created sales as a service at lower media because we realized that, hey, we’re waiting for these inbound leads. They’re fumbling them. Why don’t we teach them how we sell? Because we’re in the b two b space.

Chad Lauer [00:11:30]:
Why don’t we just do that for them and show them what a real sales process looks like? Because they’re out here fumbling these opportunities. So I 100% agree with you, and I think setting the agenda up front, especially as a sales rep or somebody that might be new to the industry, is where that fumble comes to. Right. So here’s my scope of work. Here’s your scope of work. And what are our checkpoints? Right. So we need to make sure those happen or else, again, those feelings of animosity develop.

Jeffro [00:12:01]:
Right. And so agencies like yours have added sales as a service. Right. So that’s one way to solve the problem. Others have done more of a pay for performance model where, okay, you’re only going to pay for the appointments that we get booked for you. So they’re still drawing a line, but at least they’re trying to help the person’s budget so they feel better about knowing what’s going on. And, okay, at least I know that we’re on the same alignment here. Like, you’re only getting paid when I’m getting leads.

Jeffro [00:12:27]:
And it’s not just some retainer thing where my money feels like it’s just going up in smoke every month.

Chad Lauer [00:12:33]:
Yeah. And I think from an agency perspective, that’s okay in a way, but I think where I need to educate everybody on this topic is like, what is the ROI? A pizza shop might need to sell a lot of pizzas, but a commercial roofer might need one deal a year. So when you set that campaign into motion, what are our goals? What would change your life? Is that one new lead a month going to change your life, or do we need 20? And is the budget you’re giving us sufficient enough to accomplish that goal? Like, I just spoke at a university this morning, and I use this example a time, because we’re talking digital marketing. And I said, listen, I’m a cookie shop. What should my budget be on Google Ads.

Jeffro [00:13:16]:
Right?

Chad Lauer [00:13:16]:
And everybody just made up a number, like $250, $500. Well, I show them a live cookie shop on Google today using a third party tool, and they’re spending $123,000 a month on Google Ads. Well, if you don’t ask the right questions and you pitch that cookie shop $1,500 program, they’re going to laugh you out of the meeting because you didn’t ask that they were nationwide. You didn’t know they already had ecommerce set up. You didn’t know what their current volume is. You don’t know what their Roi is. So I think the other thing that happens in sales is fact finding falls to the wayside because a rep might need to hit a goal or a quota, and then you end up not selling the client what they need. And then that sets us up for failure as well.

Chad Lauer [00:14:01]:
So how do we train sales reps and business owners to hold us accountable so that we’re kind of getting to that right point of investment that’s going to provide an ROI. So it’s another long winded answer. But that’s a training in an agency setting that needs to happen more often.

Jeffro [00:14:18]:
Right. Because you have to develop that process for accurately finding that information and quoting those projects because, yes, of course, it’s easier for a sales guy to have a list of packages and say, do you want this one or this one? Right. But that’s not going to be the best thing for them like you’ve described. So I like that.

Chad Lauer [00:14:36]:
And honestly, in digital marketing, packages are super hard to hone in. Everything we do is custom and it’s hard. Right. It’s hard for our back end and our processes. But no two flower shops are the same. No two pest control companies are the same. No two roofers are the same. Everybody’s in a different situation.

Chad Lauer [00:14:58]:
So I don’t know how packages work. They don’t work in my mind. And there will be some agency owners that say, chuck, you can’t scale at that level, but we don’t do it. We fact find we make a proper recommendation and that’s the only way that I know how to do it.

Jeffro [00:15:13]:
Yeah. Well, and I think even if you do packages, doing it custom is always going to yield a better result, a more effective campaign, because it’s more customized and tailored to that particular region or industry or their particular business model, because there’s always going to be nuances. So what are some suggestions that you have for business owners when they’re looking to hire an agency? How can they make sure they have proper expectations not only that they’re not going to get screwed, but that they kind of know what’s going to happen?

Chad Lauer [00:15:40]:
Yeah. So I think one is they need to come prepared and be open and honest with themselves and whoever they’re meeting with. Right. This is all I’ve done my whole life. Right. So there are folks who are intimidated by admitting that they don’t know what they don’t know. Right. And the biggest problem is when you’re not transparent about your current business situation, it’s impossible to make a proper recommendation.

Chad Lauer [00:16:10]:
So you need to tell me, okay, how many leads do you really need to make this work? What is your ROI? What is your target geography? Who is your biggest competitor? You need to make sure that you have such a knowledge to answer those questions so that the campaigns are set up properly. You also have to have realistic expectations and I think that making sure you’re on the same page with the rep as to what’s going to happen at the point of sale is key. We do not offer twelve month contracts or lock anybody into long term agreements. So the reason why we don’t do that is we think it actually allows you flexibility to scale. We think it allows you to invest more money up front. I’m not knocking any agencies that do it, but it’s one of those things where if somebody is going to lock you into a twelve month contract, I would just ask, why are we required to do that? I would feel much more trustworthy with you if you just did it month to month. So yeah, those are some of the things that I would look out for. And then again, are you going to share the details of the work being done with me so that I can confirm my investment is worthwhile?

Jeffro [00:17:21]:
And communication goes both ways. So obviously on the agency side, if they’re doing a good job saying here, this is what we’ve done, we’ve optimized this campaign, we did a split test over here. As the business owner, you have to go back and say, yes, you’re sending me these leads, but they all keep asking about house cleaning services. We do exterior commercial cleaning. That’s not the same thing. Oh, thanks for telling me. Now we can adjust our targeting. It is a two way street.

Jeffro [00:17:44]:
You’ve got to work with them and give them a chance to make it right and make an effective campaign. Otherwise they’re just going to look at their numbers and say, well, we’re hitting our targets, so we think we’re doing a good job.

Chad Lauer [00:17:54]:
Yeah, exactly. And that’s the other thing that I would say is when you talk about the SMB trying doing the DIY model, I think you’d be shocked. Generally when we go into those campaigns, there’s such a wasted ad spend that it easily covers our feet. Every time we go in there, there’s broad match keywords and they’re in geographies that aren’t relevant or they’re getting traffic outside of the country and they’re spending money on it. So I think that transparency, again, is key to say, hey, let’s look at an actual campaign. And that’s the other thing we’re going to manage as a Google partner, we’re going to manage the campaign and you’re going to have access to it. You’re going to see a real cost per click, you’re going to see a real impression number. It’s not a portal that I hide hostage from you.

Chad Lauer [00:18:43]:
Right. So when we set it up that way, you’re going to see the same data I am and then we can really partner on making decisions together. So if I’m a business owner, I’m trying to hold the agency accountable so that I can see real data, real dollar spend, real cost per click, real traffic, et cetera.

Jeffro [00:19:01]:
Right. And I like how you mentioned for the business owner, kind of getting your ego out of the way, too. And don’t pretend you know stuff if you don’t. And don’t make up numbers, don’t hide things. If you’re embarrassed to say that I have no idea what my close ratio is, I’ve never tracked that or I’ve only done five sales calls my whole life. These are good things to know because then as an agency or whoever your account manager is, they can coach you on that or say, okay, well, let’s start tracking that and then we’ll be able to see how we’re doing. Like, here’s a target for you based on industry standards or whatever, but here’s what we’re going to make our calculations on, our estimates on, and then you can go from there. So it is definitely a teamwork.

Chad Lauer [00:19:39]:
Totally agree.

Jeffro [00:19:40]:
So when should an owner consider handing off the sales as well as the marketing? You mentioned sales as a service. When does b two b sales as a service make sense?

Chad Lauer [00:19:49]:
Yeah. So traditionally, and over the last 30 some years, I guess we could say we’ve always placed ads and waited for that inbound lead to come to us. Right. And it works and there’s a process and there’s an investment to make that happen. What we’ve found, and what I found as a sales rep my whole life is small to medium sized businesses. When they hire, sales folks will struggle with the following. Number one is they’re really good rep, they’re not going to be able to keep them right? That rep is so good that they’re going to want to go start their own business. It’s going to click like, hey, I can do this on my own, or you’re not going to want to pay them more money than you’re making, which is what will eventually happen in that scenario of that rock star rep.

Chad Lauer [00:20:36]:
So that rep leaves. So you train them, you invest in them, they give you a couple of good gears, and they’re gone. Okay? The mediocre rep stays and the bad reps you have to fire. So you’re stuck in mediocrity where you’re investing in sales folks who are going to do probably decent average work, they’re going to cost you money and they’re going to cost you headaches, right? So what we said is for a fraction of the cost of the base salary and the benefits and the training and the recruiting, all of those fees, we already have an outbound sales process that works. Why don’t you just let us do it for you? And by the way, I want to challenge your team because we’re going to outsell them, right? So we go in, we do an analysis, we create scripts, we use LinkedIn navigator, we create prospects. We do email, phone, physical mail, outreach, and we put the sales system into place. And then when we get that solid meeting, we go in with the CEO or the decision maker or the top sales rep and we close the deal. So what I tell everybody is we’re doing the blue collar dirty work while that SMB is working on their business instead of in it, right? So that’s the big thing.

Chad Lauer [00:21:54]:
Everybody says you should work on your business instead of in it. So like right now, Jeff Row, we’re on this podcast. Lauer Media would be booking your next podcast guest as you’re on this right now. Right. That is an ideal situation where it’s 05:00 today and somebody booked you your next guest. Or if you’re a commercial roofer, they booked you for commercial roofing meetings. Or if you’re a pest control company, they booked you for pest control meetings today. Right? So I’m fascinated by it.

Chad Lauer [00:22:27]:
There are companies out there, I don’t want to name their names, that are crms that just kind of tell you what to do in the process that are worth billions of dollars. And we’re saying, hey, we’re not going to tell you what to do in the sales process. We’re going to do it for you. And I’m really excited about the future of that. I say on my Lauer Power podcast that sales is business, and business is sales for some reason. And I can’t, for the life of me figure out sales has a negative connotation to it. And if you can’t sell, you’re not in business. It’s just that simple.

Chad Lauer [00:23:00]:
So we call them business development managers or we call them marketing consultants, anything but sales reps. And I’m here to say, I own the sales process. I’m proud of the sales process, and I think that we need to take that back and say, hey, everybody today is afraid to sell. They’re like, they’re doing anything that they can to avoid the sales process. And I’m here saying, let’s own the sales process. Let’s be proud of it. Let’s be the conversation at the dinner table tonight where that business owner is like, man, I got to hire somebody like Chad, or Chad, can you come work for me? Because everybody knows they need that salesperson for them to hit that next level. And we’re so scared of it.

Chad Lauer [00:23:41]:
So that sales as a service, we’re proud of it. We’re ready to scale it. And I appreciate you asking that question.

Jeffro [00:23:48]:
Definitely. Well, I think we’ll end there. That’s a great way to kind of encapsulate this. And I appreciate your time. I appreciate all your thoughts. I think this is a really important conversation. I hope our listeners are kind of thinking through this stuff, getting some ideas and looking back on conversations they’ve had with their agency and figuring out maybe what they need to do different going forward. So, you guys listening? You can connect with Chad on LinkedIn or visit his website in the show notes.

Jeffro [00:24:13]:
Chad, do you have any final thoughts that you’d like to leave us with?

Chad Lauer [00:24:15]:
I do. This is where I nerd out. 49% of the gross GDP in the United States is made up of small to medium sized businesses. Okay. That’s just as much as those big Wall street companies. Small to medium sized businesses are the backbone of America. I’m with you. I want to help you, and we need to remind everybody of that so that we continue to support them.

Chad Lauer [00:24:42]:
Thanks for having me, Jeffrey. I appreciate it.

Jeffro [00:24:44]:
Well, definitely. And thanks for being here, Chad. Thanks to all of you guys for listening. I hope this episode gets those wheels turning and gets you feeling more prepared going forward into these conversations around hiring agencies to help with your sales and marketing. Now get out there and dominate, and I’ll see you in.

Chad Lauer [00:24:57]:
Bye.

Jeffro [00:24:57]:
The next episode.