How to Start Working on New Business, with Jake Jorgovan.

Speaker 1:

If you’re going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits too? Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build a Better Agency Podcast, presented by HubSpot. We’ll show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invested employees and best of all, more money to the bottom line, bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency, owner and agency consultant to you, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey, everybody. Drew McLellan here, and welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. As you know, one of my favorite topics, and one of the topics that I believe is most important for agency owners to be thinking about every day is biz dev. So that’s really where we’re going to focus in today’s episode. So my guest today has spent a lot of his career really focusing on that, and we’re going to dig into that. So let me tell you a little bit about Jake Jorgovan. So for many years, Jake owned a video production agency and he had a business partner and it turned out that his business partner was much better at doing the work and Jake by default, became the guy who went out and got them the work.

Along the way, he landed them several fortune 500 clients and really bringing them some great A-list clients that allowed them to really grow the business. Jake decided to leave that agency and then went out and worked to on his own. He’s a digital marketing and web consultant for a few years, but quickly realized that he was not only better at getting the work and doing the work, but he actually enjoyed it more. So at that point, he launched his own business where he now works with other agencies to help them win more clients. So as you can imagine, Jake has all kinds of tricks up his sleeve, and we’re going to dig into those. So Jake, welcome to the show.

Jake Jorgovan:

Thanks for having me on here, Drew.

Drew McLellan:

Glad to have you. Hey, so as you know, many agency owners hate new business. So what is it about it that you love? How did you come to enjoy it as much as you do? Was that an evolution for you or did you always like it that much?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, it’s something for me that … I mean, I quickly realized that it was an absolute necessity and went out there and started learning how to do it better. I think a lot of people look at it as some foreign thing or assume that they’re bad at it, but whenever I got into it, I started reading books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, or I started reading books on sales because I knew that it was essential to growing your business, and when you start actually looking at it as part, kind of an art form like that, it makes it something just kind of enjoyable, and a lot of agencies, they consider themselves, they started off as designers or artists in some sense. So it’s just kind of a new skill that you have to learn, just like anything else

Drew McLellan:

Beyond reading the books, how did you learn the skill? Is it just one of those things that you have to exercise the muscle or are there some things that the listeners can do to sort of do a shortcut in their learning? Because a lot of owners part … I think part of why they don’t like it is because they’re not sure what to do.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. I mean, I do think that immersing yourself in just some of like the classic sales books is a great place to start and just get you in the right mentality. That is just one thing. I mean sales is … it’s almost like learning design, I would say in a way, where it’s not like there’s just X, Y, Z steps. It’s like, it’s you got to get kind of crafted to get better, start practicing things, learning best practices, but there’s no perfect right or wrong way to do it. I think it’s also just a lot of putting yourself out there, learning how to talk to people, learning how to just do activities that are going to generate conversations, that are going to generate opportunities for you. So it’s just a lot of learning whatever you can and then practicing it on a regular basis as well, which is the really important part to make it a habit.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think part of it too is the mindset. I think a lot of owners go into it, thinking that they’re trying to convince someone to do something or they’re sort of trying to not take advantage, but they’re trying to lure someone into an activity or whatever, as opposed to every agency has skills and tools and knowledge that can help people grow their business. So, if you think about it that you’re just trying to help somebody grow their business, I think it shifts the pressure.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, so I mean, it goes back to that old like doctor analogy of, if a doctor came across you and you were sick and he just let you sit there and not do anything about it, that’d be kind of terrible. You’d expect a doctor to do something, to try to help or give you advice or remedies to get better, and it’s the same thing as an agency owner. Our thing is to help basically businesses market themselves better, generate more sales, grow their businesses. So, I mean, that’s when you start to look at sales in that sense as if it’s almost like your duty to actually go out there and sell because you’re going to help these businesses.

If you really believe in what you’re selling and know that you’re going to deliver a great product that helps them in the end, then it doesn’t feel weird anymore. It just feels like you’re taking them on a natural evolution to help them.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I know one of the techniques that you have a lot of experience in is how to really make the most out of conferences and trade shows. I’m sort of stunned at how many agencies either on behalf of their clients or themselves go to these events and pay a lot of money. Sometimes they have a booth. Sometimes they’re just taking several people, but they have no game plan. They don’t do anything in advance. They don’t do anything afterwards, and they just kind of wander around during this show, maybe they have a list of people they’re hoping to meet, but that’s about as sophisticated as it gets. So how do you recommend that agencies really maximize the time and the investment if they’re going to go to a conference or a show?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, I mean, and so I’ll kind of share like a general process here, and this can be really be used for anything from a small as a meetup event, like locally to a larger conference that you attend, but you’re totally right that most people just show up and they just walk around and hope that they’re going to bump into a great client.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

So what I’ve found is that if you put legwork in front before the conference, you can find out a ton of information and typically, every conference is different in terms of what they actually list online, but you can research the events, you can often find a lot of attendees or at minimum, you can find out who the speakers are. So what I basically recommend in the campaign that I’ve run with several of my clients is we basically go through everyone we can find we know who’s attending and we just build a hit list of people that we want to connect with while they’re at the conference. Then, with about three weeks leading up to that, we’ll actually start to reach out to them and contact them.

That’s kind of basically like the high level strategy of just building your hit list, reaching out to them and then trying to set up meetings while you’re at the conference. It works wonderfully because you have this kind of built in sense of urgency with setting those meetings, so when normally, you’re trying to reach out with a cold email or something, and someone might ignore you, you actually have this kind of relevant urgent message of saying, “Hey, I’m going to be here on the ground at this conference at this time,” they’ve already blocked out, two or three days to go to this conference as well. So there’s very little objection for them to actually take the time to meet up with you or talk with you for a bit at the conference.

Drew McLellan:

So when you reach out to them, what does that initial contact look like?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So typically, what I’ll do is put together, and I can actually send you some of these scripts that you can put in the show notes as well here. Typically, I’ll start off with an email subject line that says something like meeting up at, whatever the conference or the event name is. Then, and if they’re a speaker, say something like your presentation on whatever topic, looks really interesting and then try to really just kind of personalize it, whenever you do these outreach emails like this, the more personal you can make it, obviously the better it’ll get. Then, would say something your topic interested me, so I want to reach out about connecting while on the ground at the conference.

I work with so and so, and we do this and since you’re already on the ground, it would be great to connect for a few. Let me know if you’re interested and I look forward to meeting you. Just something short and kind of simple like that, that is personal, shows you did research on them, shows you’re interested in the things that they’re interested in and speaking on. It goes a long way and we’ve gotten meetings with very high level speakers who often we didn’t think would actually take the time to actually get to know you as a result of using this kind of approach.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So let’s say a speaker has agreed to meet with us, what prep do we do before that meeting and what do we hope that meeting looks like?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So again, that’s going to depend really on, is this person a direct client? Is this a strategic partner or what’s the kind of end goal relationship that you’re trying to come out with here?

Drew McLellan:

So let’s assume that the person could be a client.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So say you’ve got the opportunity to meet with someone that could be a client for your advertising agency. Well, before you actually get there to the meeting, you’re going to want to do whatever research and prep you can on them, maybe look at what they’re currently doing for marketing, what their website is, and try to just come up with some thoughts and ideas that you could share with them. Casually, not in like a hard sales pitch, as soon as you meet them, but the idea is to get into a conversation, try to make it natural, ask them a lot of questions, learn about them. Then, uncover maybe what … are they using another agency already?

What are they currently doing as it relates to say, like their online marketing? Do they have an AdWords agency or anything? So uncover everything you can, ask questions first, but then in that whole entire time, you’ve got that kind of, all that research, that background information that you’ve gotten on them and then you can kind of use that to start to steer that conversation in the direction of, “Hey, well maybe we should talk again after this conference.” Maybe it could be a good fit us to help you out. So, it’s not … you’re not trying to make a sale right there on the first meeting.

You’re really trying to build rapport, you’re trying to learn, connect with them and just learn about their problems and if you’re a good fit, and if that works then continue the sales conversation most likely after the conference.

Drew McLellan:

So the goal of that conversation, the outcome goal of that conversation is to have another conversation, right?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It’s to get there and build that rapport and just get to that next conversation.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So we’ve now chatted with the speaker who could be a potential client. They’ve said … maybe they were non-committal on the next conversation, what’s my follow up after the conference?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, so the follow up after the conference, you want to follow up quickly. If you meet with that person, it’s not even a bad idea to email them. If you’re on Monday and it’s a three day conference, it’s not a bad idea to email them that Monday or Tuesday night. So don’t let that sit for 72 or more hours. Try to get it out within 24 to 48 hours of actually meeting them, to try to get that next … at least get that email thread started about booking that next meeting. So, follow up with them and say, “Hey, it was great talking. Would love to continue our conversation. How does your schedule look next week at so and so times,” or just kind of giving them the option.

Just trying to keep it somewhat casual and if they give you any resistance, then you can really kind of, go into maybe a little more straightforward of saying, “I really think there’s some ways we could help your business out or improve what you’re doing,” but typically try to just keep it casual and just get to that next phone call.

Drew McLellan:

What if at the conversation, it’s clear they have an agency, they love their agency, and so right now the door is not open. How do you follow up with someone like that?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. If there’s someone like that, then the goal is to really just build rapport, leave a good impression in their mind and then kind of keep them in the back burner. Then, they could go onto a campaign like you mentioned with, say, you’re the top … the 25 that we had discussed on the other podcast we did.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

Just keeping them in kind of an ongoing follow sequence. After that, maybe saying something, “It was great meeting you. It sounds like you’re pretty well set right now, but if you ever need help in the future, would love to work with you,” or if you think there’s opportunity to get them to switch, you can still try to push for a meeting, but typically if there’s not a direct opportunity, I just try to kind of follow up lightly and then, we’ll tell them, maybe I’ll follow up again in a few months and see where things are at, at that point. So nothing too heavy, if it seems like they’re pretty well already said or there’s not a direct opportunity.

Drew McLellan:

Then, how do you recommend … so let’s say we now have a list of 50 people … we’ve done this for a year and we have a list of 50 people who have all said, “No, thanks. Not now.” How do you stay top of mind with those folks when they’re not in the buying mode right now?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, so this is actually a practice I literally did earlier this week. About once a quarter, I have my entire list of just people that are … have either said, “Not right now, they’re on hold. Not interested at this point,” and once a quarter I just go through that list and I try to just reach out to everyone and just start a conversation again of some sort. It’s not, sometimes I’ll be direct and say, “Hey, you mentioned you were working with so and so at this point. I want to see if you were still looking at new options or considering someone new for the upcoming year.” Maybe I’ll send them a blog post, I think could be relevant. Just try to basically just start up a conversation with them again and see if we can get them reengaged.

That’s one that for all the people that are on hold that I don’t think are really prime prospects to buy, just try on at least a quarterly basis to reach out with them, touch them and just keep yourself top of mind.

Drew McLellan:

Are you doing that individually or are you doing that by some sort of mass email?

Jake Jorgovan:

I’ve always been a believer of doing that individually. It’s a good half day effort whenever you … as your list of that actually grows, but it’s just something where I am a firm … I mean, I’ve got a newsletter and have other tools like that, and I’ve always been advocates of that because it does keep you top of mind with a large number of people.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

In terms of the people you’ve actually met, been on phone calls with, had conversations with where you’ve got notes and actual context on them, those, I just believe you’ve always got enough context to write something slightly personal in those messages. That goes just a long way, as opposed to just sending kind of a mass email.

Drew McLellan:

Which also gets back to the idea that you probably need to have a manageable size list. One of the things I talk to agency owners about all the time is I think one of the reasons why agency owners are so paralyzed at the idea of new business is because it feels so daunting, because they think they have to reach out to 250 people. The reality is if 10% of those 250 people, all of a sudden said, “Yes, I want to buy something from you,” the agency would be hosed because they can’t onboard that many new clients. They can’t serve that many clients. So it really is about understanding the numbers and if your goal is to grow your business, let’s say by 25 or 30% AGI, how many clients is that?

For most agencies that’s going to ideally be two or three clients. So, what does it take to get two or three and really scaling your list appropriately so that you can be more personal and more attentive, and it doesn’t feel like you’re just sort of email bombing them to continue the conversation, right?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, yeah, exactly because I mean … like I said, if you send out the mass emails, you might not get the results, but as you go through that list and as you go through the people that said no or put you on hold, as you go through that, you kind of have the idea of who are the ones that actually I could revive.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

When you get to those names and you write those emails, you’ll know when you get those responses that, “Okay, that probably wouldn’t have happened if I did a mass email.” It may only be, you go through that entire list of people that have put you on hold and only five to 10 of those are really like good viable opportunities, but if you take time to really personalize those and you’ve revive those conversations and you get one or two clients out of that, then it’s made the whole practice worthwhile.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely. So again, listeners, this is where I will remind you again, that you need to have what I call the sweet spot client filter. So again, you need to have a description that has criteria for who is your best fit client, who are the clients that you can delight every time and who keep coming back for more, and that may be a client size, that may be the industry they’re in. It might be, if you’re their first agency or not. It might be who’s leading the team on their side internally. Are you working with a business owner, a CMO, a team of people in a marketing department for every agency, that list is going to be different.

Who is your best fit client, but without articulating that, and without keeping that top of mind, it’s very difficult to take a list like Jake is talking about and really prune it appropriately, so you can decide where to apply your time and energy. So again go through the effort of creating that profile of the ideal client so that you recognize them when you see them.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. That’s great advice and it goes a long way just to clarify and make everything a lot simpler when you do that.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely. So what is your philosophy on … so you’ve got these people on the list, they’ve said no for now, but let’s say they are pretty good fit for your … as we call it, the sweet spot client filter. So it would be a good client for you. How long do you stay in touch? How long do you keep nurturing that lead?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, it’s something where I keep people around and I’ve nurtured them for years at a time before actually turning them into customers. It’s not uncommon that someone says no, and because it’s the timing is not right or anything and it literally takes over a year to come around, whenever I had my video agency, we worked in the event industry, which has horribly long sales cycles because events are planned on annual … like annually.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Jake Jorgovan:

Literally, the decision to hire for an event that’s a year away is made about a year before. So it’s like you have to get in a year before the event to even start getting in the pitch process to then close a deal that’s … you’ll probably start working on eight months out from the event, so our sales cycles for that were just continuing to nurture people, continuing stay in front of them. When we had the video agency, one of the things we did that was really effective was my way to stay in touch, was to really just kind of, anytime we launch a new really big project, would reach out again and use that as an excuse to kind of personally email a lot of people on our list.

Did that again in like a personalized way, just to say, “Hey, here’s what we’ve been up to.” It wasn’t through just kind of a mass email blast, but just saying, “Hey, here’s what we’ve been up to. I think this project is cool, would love to work with you on it.” That worked, I guess because it was an interesting project, but that was another just effective way, we used that to follow up and stay in touch with people over, sometimes two years or so before we actually saw business come out of that.

Drew McLellan:

Well, I think of new business as sort of … it’s like investing, right? The dollar cost average, you never know on what day a client is going to get ticked off at their agency or have their main client contacted an agency leave or that the client is going to get fired and go do a new job, and all of a sudden, the boss’s brother-in-law is no longer a factor in what agency they work for. So, I think it is about just staying in touch and staying on their radar because on any given Tuesday, they might be ready, and if they don’t remember you or you haven’t reached out for a while, then you lose the opportunity, but we’ve seen with some of the MI agencies, I mean, literally sometimes that first conversation, bang, you have a client.

Sometimes it’s five or six or eight years later before that person is either in a position or the circumstances are right or whatever, before they’re ready to hire you, but unless … my sort of standard line is you chase after that dream list of clients until they hire you or they get a restraining order, you just stay on it, right, until one of two things happens.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. I mean, at our video agency, that was exactly how we got to those fortune 500 clients. We built our list of who our top 30 event planners were, that we wanted to work with, who are our main clients and we just … where we just didn’t stop. We just kept going after them, and we only built relationships. So we got to pitch to probably about six of them, built relationships with two of them, but those two led to some of the biggest projects and biggest clients our agency had won. So yeah, just that dream client approach staying really focused on that small number of perfect clients. If you have a really big client lifetime value, that is an incredible approach to go.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, absolutely. So, you just sort of hinted at another strategy that I know you believe in really strongly, which is sort of the idea of strategic partnerships and having alliances that lead you to clients. So I want to dig into that, but first let’s take a quick break. I get that sometimes you just can’t get on a plane and spend a couple days in a live workshop. So hopefully our online courses are a solution to that. Lots of video, hours and hours of video, a very dense, detailed participants guide and all kinds of help along the way to make sure that you get the learning that you need and apply it immediately to your agency. Right now, we’ve got two courses that are available. We have the agency new business blueprint, and we have the AE bootcamp. So feel free to check those at agencymanagementinstitute.com/ondemandcourses.

All right, everybody, we are back with Jake Jorgovan and we are talking biz dev. So Jake, right before the break, you had sort of talked about how you were … when you were in the video agency, you were aligning with event planners who then led you to big events and big clients. So I know one of the strategies that you really believe in is this whole idea of strategic partnership. So can you kind of tell us a little bit more about that?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, so there’s just … one of the things that I’ve come to see time and time again, especially as more and more agencies are becoming less generalist and more specialist, is that you’ve got a huge opportunity to basically build partnerships with either other agencies or other people that are selling directly into the same types of clients that you are. So, just kind of extend on that story that I was sharing just a second ago before the break, for us, our video agency, we did motion graphics for stage production. So whenever you go out to a stage and they have all the projectors and the LED walls and all the graphics on those, that’s the kind of stuff we designed.

So we built a ton of strategic partnerships, was really a massive way that we did this. Our first, the low hanging strategic partners were the gear companies. The people that provided those projectors and LED walls because they had sales teams out there that would say all to event planners, and then they always needed content in some way, shape or form. So we got pulled in a ton through those kind of partnerships. Eventually, we even started saying, “Okay, how do we get one step closer to the clients? How do we get, actually not being the last one added to this chain?” So, that’s when we started our dream client campaign, focused on event planners, which really were strategic partners for us because they were the middlemen between us and the fortune 500 client.

They were the ones who actually planned the whole event, delegated out the budgets, got everyone, pull all the resources and then planned everything. So we basically went out and just pitched and made ourselves a resource to a few select strategic partners, which were meeting planners and they ended up bringing us in multiple times for very large events that there’s no way we would’ve got in on if we had tried to go direct to the end company.

Drew McLellan:

Once you got in with a big fortune 500 company and you were doing your part of their event, when that introduction came through an event planner, did you then try and cultivate and were you successful at cultivating a relationship directly with the client, so you could get more work or for you, was it sort of one and done kind of work?

Jake Jorgovan:

For us, I’ll be honest that we didn’t … we were not too, able to really cultivate that beyond the events partially because I guess the way we were branded is that we were really focused on the event company. So even when we get into these fortune 500 clients, they’re still looking at us as the video vendor for the live event content. So we did struggle to then kind of level that up and get more work through other departments within that fortune 500, but that’s partially because we had niche down to saying we do video content for live events, which was our focus.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

So that was, if we had, we’ve been positioned differently, we might have been able to take that differently but they always kind of said, “Okay, you’re the company that’s working with the event planner on this.”

Drew McLellan:

So as you leverage this same strategy now in a more broad context, how do you recommend, so if a … let’s say a media vendor or someone like that is the conduit to that first introduction, how do you recommend agencies begin to cultivate a relationship with the end user outside of the conduit? So, how do they eventually get the middle man out of the middle, I guess is the question I’m asking?

Jake Jorgovan:

I guess the question is, is that always the right thing, because in some ways it’s also could be disrespectful. If you’ve really got a good relationship with the middle man, and they’re bringing you a lot of work, then that can be a great thing. Maybe they’re taking some margin off the top or something, but for instance, one of my clients is a UX design agency and we set up a partnership with a development agency and it’s just consistent ongoing work. That’s just a perfect match between the two of them. So, it’s something where they’re not … he’s not trying to actually go and take the work from the other client that when you do that, it kind of-

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No.

Jake Jorgovan:

Steal the partnership.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely. I’m not suggesting that, but what I’m saying is a lot of agencies will look for example, at a media rep and think that they … because they have contacts in all the marketing people that they may be able to introduce them in. At some point in time, in that case, you have to have a relationship directly with the client. You can’t run the account through the media rep. So I don’t disagree, when a partner brings you in to do part of a project that they sort of have the lead on, I totally agree with you. It’s suicidal to try and sidestep them and go to the client direct and it’s not only disrespectful, but it’s just bad karma and it’s just bad ethics. I mean, it’s just not moral to do that. If someone brings you in as part of a team, you don’t kill the carrier of who brought you in.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So I’d say on the kind of, the point of say, you have a media rep or someone like that who has access to tons of your target clients.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

The thing that I look at there is, okay, how could you maybe set up a structured partnership? Could it be something where you give them a referral commission?

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Jake Jorgovan:

Sometimes people are very comfortable with that and okay with doing that. Otherwise, maybe they just send you a referral and it’s not even asked for or commission basis. If they do that, then you send them the nicest thank you gift in the world to just really show your appreciation, and then you keep trying to kind of nurture that relationship with them.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Jake Jorgovan:

One practice that I’ve done is actually, within my whole CRM in my pipeline, I have a separate section for strategic partners or anytime I start a relationship with a strategic partner, I will put them in here in kind of three categories of the relationship has started. They’ve attempted to make a referral to me, and then, actually that referral has closed and turned into business. It’s one of the things where that’s another thing you can do and put your time toward is to just nurture those relationships with strategic partners, figure out how can you create value for them? Can you introduce them to someone else that’s going to be beneficial to them?

And just try to nurture that and if you just kind of keep the touch points up, eventually, whenever they see the opportunity, you’re top of mind and it’s send … they’ll send a referral over your way.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah, and what CRM do you use? Do you have a belief that one is better than the other or is it more about the mechanic than the tool?

Jake Jorgovan:

Definitely, I believe it’s more about the mechanic than the tool, but if you don’t have a tool, I don’t think that’s good or if you don’t use your tool.

Drew McLellan:

Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

So I use Pipedrive, which is one that I personally love. It’s very similar to Trello, if anyone use Trello. Trello and Pipedrive are the two that I recommend a lot of people start with just because … for agencies, because they’re very visual and they’re set up for companies that aren’t doing a massive volume of deals. So it’s just, they’ve got the kind of the deal routing features in there where you can see if someone hasn’t been touched in a week or so. So it’s just a very simple CRM that works very well for if you’re not doing a high volume of deals, which is kind, where most agency business is.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Absolutely, and probably should be, right? I mean, again, we’re not chasing after 500 new clients. So when you’re working with a client and you’re helping them sort of structure their new business practice, how do you help them weave that into their daily activity is, as you know, and you and I have talked before, I’m a firm believer that new business is something that should be done every day, and you don’t follow the feast and famine method, that you don’t only do it when the big client is threatening to quit but that you’ve got some new business activity happening every day. How do you help agency owners or business owners because I know that you do this across sectors, but how do you help whoever the person is who’s responsible for the biz dev, how do you help them structure their day, so this gets done?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So the biggest thing that I try to tell most people is to just try to block out at least an hour a day, typically in the morning, as a way to just put time in on working on your own projects before you dive into client work, and a lot of people struggle with that, but to really set a time aside or to make that work or maybe their schedule is too crazy, but what I’ll typically … I typically recommend try to get an hour a day in and then try to give yourself some specific tasks or goals that you can accomplish each week. Nothing too big, like don’t aim really huge, but if you needed to write the new copy for your homepage or your website or whatever it is, or get the new case study online, just like make like one small goal each week.

If you can just make progress on those through daily effort and just getting some bigger chunks done each week, then over time, that adds up into a ton of results. If you just do a lot of activity, then over time that eventually starts to turn into opportunities and into more deals.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. It reminds me a little bit of the … all of the exercise equipment commercials. It’s 20 minutes three times a week. They chunk it up into little bits and make the point that if you do a little bit on a regular basis, it adds up to big results, and I think you’re right, I think in the biz dev world, it’s about chipping away at it every day for a period of time and even if you can only squeak in 30 minutes a day, that’s two and a half hours a week, which is way more than most agencies are doing today.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, and then whenever I hear people say that they don’t have the time or they can’t fit that in or anything, I just say just it’s like, you’ve got to figure out a way.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Jake Jorgovan:

I can’t remember the laws in four hour work week or whatever, but if you put that in there at the beginning of the day, then by the end of the day, you’re going to figure out how to get all your client work done because you’ve got people hounding at your door. If you wait to put your own stuff to the end of the day, then you’ll just like, “Ah, I can wait until tomorrow,” but when you put it in there at the beginning of the day, it just kind of forces you to be more efficient through the rest of your day because you’ve now cut an hour out of your client work. So, when you get into your client work, you figure out a way to get it done in those seven hours you have left.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and I also think, agency life is all about running from fire to fire, to fire. So the only way to actually be intentional about work that’s not on fire is to do it before you show up at the fire station, right, because the minute you’re at the fire station, the bell is ringing and you’re putting on your gear and hopping on the truck. So for a lot of agency owners, I think and I’m curious what you think about it, I think carving out that first hour and doing it from home or from a coffee shop or somewhere, and I know people are twitching as I say this, but before you check email, before you check into the office, if you invest that hour from home or somewhere other than the office, because the minute an owner walks in the door at the office, there’s a trail of ducklings following after that person with questions and that’s how their day goes.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, no, that’s totally true and that’s … whatever your system is, if you can’t go into the office because you don’t want to get interrupted by other people, then do it from a coffee shop or from home. If I work from home-

Drew McLellan:

Or your car. I don’t care, right?

Jake Jorgovan:

I just don’t check the email. I just do not. I refuse to check email before 10 AM

Drew McLellan:

Has anyone died because you’ve done that? I mean literally, has there been a fatality in your life because you did not check email before 10 AM?

Jake Jorgovan:

No and it never once.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Jake Jorgovan:

If I’m really worried that there’s like the fire, that could be the thing, then I’ll maybe do the quick check to see if I need to jump on the fire and then I put my hour in, but I just check it and I promise not to look at anything else, and then, I hop back and you can do that if you’re really that scared, but for the most part just don’t look at the email.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. One of the techniques that I teach both owners and account execs is the idea of turning the auto processing of your email off so that you have to manually hit, check my email and that you only do it four or five times a day, that you don’t have it constantly pinging you in the corner of your laptop and/or your tablet or however you’re getting email these days, and exactly what you’re saying, that you don’t check it first thing in the morning, that you get the big, hairy thing that you’ve got to get done done before you allow everybody else’s emergencies to impact you. What I remind them is that if it’s really an emergency and you don’t answer an email, your clients or your coworkers.

Your family all know how to escalate to calling your cell phone or sending you a text or calling someone else in the office and saying, “Hey, is Drew around? I really need to talk to him,” whatever. They can escalate it. You don’t have to assume that everything in your inbox is urgent.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, that is totally true. It’s not the end of the world. Yeah, it’ll be okay.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Right. Right. So beyond carving out that time in the morning, what other things do you recommend are best practices around sort of the daily activity of new business?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So one of the other things that I just really am an advocate of is … and I’m writing a book on this process right now, but that as an agency owner, you need to figure out what your actual objectives are, what is it that you’re really trying to achieve or you’re trying to get to, five clients on retainer, 10 clients on retainer, or what is your goal?

Drew McLellan:

Are you talking measurable goals?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yes. I am talking measurable goals, but I’m a huge advocate of having that and then-

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Jake Jorgovan:

Having like, what is your annual goal or your bigger milestone and then breaking that down into like, what is something that you can achieve in the next three months and whether that’s adding one more client or two more clients to that, and then just looking at what are the exact projects or actions or things that you’re going to do to get you toward that short term milestone? I think when people say, “Oh, I want to have 10 new clients by the end of the year and right now, they only have four.” That seems like a really big gap to me.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. It’s daunting.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, but when your goal is okay, I want to get to six, like that’s two new clients. You can say, “Okay, well, I’m going to try going out to these events or I’m going to start trying to send a few emails to new prospects in the morning or do my follow ups with people.” You can start to just look at what are the individual tactics that you’re going to try to use to get to that next milestone. Then, once you get there, you just keep kind of leveling that up and until you get to your bigger picture goal.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. I think it’s sort of the … a version of the, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, right? When the task is daunting, we have to break it down into manageable bite size pieces. Otherwise, we get paralyzed and I think that’s where a lot of agency owners, they feel like they can’t carve out enough time to get five new clients. So rather than do anything, they just sort of get stuck. Then, they go to what’s comfortable, which is email and client work and walking through the office and all the things that they’re naturally good at, and that feels good and it feels like they’ve accomplished something. I think email … one of the things I think is evil about email is when you have an inbox of let’s say 100 emails and you plow through all of those and you answer them all, that’s a great feeling of accomplishment.

Even though that is probably not the best use of your time. So it’s like this weird false, happy, right? Because you were super busy and you also by the way, got to avoid the stuff you didn’t want to do, but really there’s not a lot of ROI in it.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. No, that totally makes sense and that’s why whenever I think about the business development stuff, like we said, just shutting down the email and the way that I think helps to look at that, because the other thing that people do is when they do start trying to do that biz dev, they just start getting overwhelmed because they have this million projects, they want to redo their website, they want to launch this outreach campaign. They want to start that podcast or get that blog post up and they’re trying to do like a million things at once.

Drew McLellan:

Right. Right.

Jake Jorgovan:

That’s the other side of it. People either aren’t doing anything or they’re trying to do everything and accomplishing nothing. So, the advice I typically have is to try to use what are two ongoing tactics that you’re focusing on right now? So maybe it’s starting to put up blogs on your site and going out to meet up events or networking events, once or twice a week. Then, you have one project tactic and the project tactic is probably like the biggest thing of just only working on one internal project at a time. Don’t jump from case studies to website, to getting this new video done or whatever this is. There’s so many projects that people are always starting and never finishing.

It’s like the recurring story of every agency I talk to, where they’ve got like four internal marketing projects and works but nothing gets launched. So just do one at a time to get done.

Drew McLellan:

And they’re not going to chase after new business until all of it’s done, right? My point to them is you’ve gotten clients with the crappy website you have now, so just start the process. Yes, you need a new website and by all means, start that but you don’t stall your new business activity until that’s done or until the video, the blogging, the website and the testimonials and the case studies are all done. You don’t wait for perfect. You just go.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, exactly. That’s … and focus on like whatever then … and then that focus on the project of like whatever the biggest priority thing is that you need to get done, get that done first and then add the others, but don’t try everything at once because it’s just never going to get done.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah.

Jake Jorgovan:

So yeah, it’s great advice.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So what are two ongoing things that you’re going to do on a regular basis? So again, it might be blogging and it might be attending key industry conferences or meetups and then taking on one sort of project or sort of bigger rock thing at a time and getting that done and then taking on the next one. Anything else that you recommend as people sort of structure this out for themselves?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. The other thing that I just recommend also is that people just experiment and test a lot, is that whenever you’re trying networking events, a lot of people will say, “I’m going to make it my annual goal. I’m going to go to more events this year and meet people because that’s how I’ve met … got other clients in the past.” You’ll burn out if you keep trying to do one tactic forever.

Drew McLellan:

Yup.

Jake Jorgovan:

So, try to just experiment and try new things out. Maybe you do go to a bunch of networking events this month and then next month maybe you’re starting to try to do blogging or you’re trying to do cold email outreach to new prospects. Just kind of do a handful of different experiments, see what works and then double down on what works and just kind of start to kill off the things that don’t work. Eventually, look back, and one of the most useful have is to have, is actually to look back and see how did I get all of my past clients?

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Jake Jorgovan:

Look at what you did and then just start to try to replicate those activities, because there’s so many people that did something and they don’t even realize it or think about it but a lot of their work is coming from one key area and they’re not doing that activity anymore, just because they moved on to new things that they’re trying.

Drew McLellan:

One of my favorite new business tactics, which I’m stunned that every agency doesn’t do more of, is once you defined exactly who your sweet spot client is, share that list with your current clients and say, “You know what, here’s why you’re a great client because you have an internal marketing department and we’re not your first agency and you really celebrate great creative work,” or whatever the criteria is for you and some of the criteria like pays your bills on time or whatever, you may want to take some of those out. Sharing with your current clients, here’s what we love about you and man, we would love to have someone else like you and just see … So every agency loves to get business by referral.

I think that’s a fine tactic, but you want to direct the referrals. You want to be able to channel those referrals so that you’re not getting referrals that you’re like, “I sort of have to take this because my big client asked me to, but these guys are really a bad fit for us or they don’t pay well or they’ve got a puny budget,” or whatever the problem is, if you define who you’re looking for, it’s much easier for them to help you find them.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah and then people are always scared because they’re like, “Oh, what if then they don’t send me other business,” and things you don’t want that other business and ultimately the more specific you are, the more likely it is that they’re going to … like that kind of person is going to pop in their mind as opposed to that wrong fit.

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Jake Jorgovan:

So even though they might have sent you two referrals instead of one, if you get that one good one that’s what counts.

Drew McLellan:

Well, and again, it gets back to, we’re circling back around, but you don’t need 12 new clients. So you want the exact right fit ones as often as you can because you only have room for a few.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. As I knew it would be, this has been a great conversation. If folks are fired up and those owners who have been sort of neglecting their new business efforts, are ready to do something tomorrow, what would you recommend are some first steps that they take to get their new business efforts back on track if perhaps they’re coming, the holidays or they just have never really exercised this muscle before. What are sort of some basic first steps that they should do to get on the path?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah. So I’d say, I mean the first steps for people that aren’t doing anything in this is I always recommend just starting with your existing network and looking back at everyone who has. So, a very useful exercise is just to build a list of everyone in your network. People who said no or put you on hold and start there and try to reengage because those are already people that are so close to being able to buy. They’re already familiar with you. So that’s honestly always a great place to start and then, on top of that, again, figure out what is one or two tactics that I’m going to start using to start trying to generate conversations with new prospects. What is something that I’m going to enjoy doing?

What is something that I believe is going to be effective in terms of getting me in conversation in front of talking to new people.

Drew McLellan:

Awesome. All right. So if folks want to track you down, Jake and they want to learn more about your work or they … you mentioned that you have an E-newsletter or they want to start following your writing, what is the best way for them to find you and to learn more about the work you do?

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, so I publish a regular blog at jake-jorgovan.com and everything I focus on is winning new clients for agencies. So, very relevant to this audience, and also, I am currently working on a book called Win Your Dream Clients, which is at winyourdreamclients.com.

Drew McLellan:

When is that coming out?

Jake Jorgovan:

It will be coming out mid 2017.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, awesome.

Jake Jorgovan:

Yeah, in process, got the first half written, working on the second.

Drew McLellan:

That is a lot of work. I have done a few of those myself and boy it feels good when you send it off and you know it’s done.

Jake Jorgovan:

I love the writing part. I hate the editing.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Yeah. That is the painful part. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for sharing your expertise so freely, and I know that agencies are going to come out of the shoot with some new ideas and hopefully they will actually put what you talked about in practice because I think you gave them a lot of good food for thought and a lot of good actionable ideas. So thank you very much.

Jake Jorgovan:

No problem. Well, thanks for having me on here, Drew, and if anyone has questions, they can reach out to me on my side. I’m happy to answer anything.

Drew McLellan:

Okay, awesome. Hey guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Please don’t just listen to these. I try very hard to ask the guests to give you stuff to do, ways to get better and I’m hoping that you put them into practice. So today’s episode was filled with those, so I hope that you take at least one or two nuggets and actually put them into practice to grow your agency stronger, better, more profitable for you and your clients and your employees so that it’s an even better year than you had last year. We will be back next week with another guest and more insights and tactical things for you to think about.

In the meantime, if you need to track me down, you know that I’m at [email protected]. If you haven’t subscribed, make sure you do. We’ve got a new episode every week and as always, you make me cry for joy if you leave me ratings and reviews. So I would greatly appreciate it if you would do that as well. We’ll see you next week. Talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

That’s all for this episode of AMI’s Build a Better Agency, brought to you by HubSpot. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses and other ways we serve small to midsize agencies. Don’t miss an episode as we help you build the agency you’ve always dreamed of owning.