Confessions of a Marketing
Agency Millionaire
How To Make $1,000,000 With Only 5 Clients
By
Benjamin D. Simkin
Copyright © 2021 by Benjamin D. Simkin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used
in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except
for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information,
contact: ben@businessnet.com.au
FIRST EDITION
www.agencygrowthaccelerator.com
“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right”
- Henry Ford
Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................. 1
Chapter 1: The Marketing Agency Conundrum .................................. 11
Chapter 2: The #1 Thing Clients Hate About Agency’s ..................... 17
Chapter 3: Business Models. Should You Even Run An Agency? ..... 22
Chapter 4: The Ethical Dilemma Of Pricing Models .......................... 26
Chapter 5: The New Paradigm For Agencies ...................................... 32
Chapter 6: Why You Need To Charge More ....................................... 39
Chapter 7: How To Establish Value Based Fees ................................. 46
Chapter 8: The 8 Different Ways To Price Your Marketing Services 59
Chapter 9: The Ultimate Sales Process To Convert Any Client.......... 64
Chapter 10: Client Selection & The Biggest Lie You’ve Been Told .. 71
Chapter 11: The Perfect Day & The Measure Of The Successful
Agency Owner....................................................................................... 81
Chapter 12: The Secrets To Hiring An Incredible Team .................... 85
Chapter 13: How To Make $1,000,000 From 5 Clients In 90 Days Or
Less ..................................................................................................................90
Conclusion ............................................................................................ 95
Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Introduction
i, I’m Ben Simkin. In 2005, I started my Marketing Agency,
BusinessNET. Since then, I’ve generated more than $2B+ in sales for
my clients.
H
Today, the agency turns over more than $7M+ annually with a team of
only 6.
I decided to write this book and reveal every secret I’ve discovered along
the way about how to grow a highly profitable marketing agency.
And I did it for 2 reasons:
a) Very quickly you’ll realise there’s a better way to run your agency
and you’ll want to join my Marketing Agency Accelerator™ so I
can help you implement what you read here
b) So agency owners can finally get paid high fees that truly
reflect the value they provide to their clients - and stop trading
their time for money.
It’s that simple.
Through these pages, you’ll discover every single thing I’ve learned
about how to make a marketing agency that’s highly profitable, generates
amazing client results, and runs effortlessly with a low hassle, highly
motivated team - so you can live the lifestyle you’ve always wanted to.
Firstly, you need to understand this.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Put everything you know about running a marketing agency to the
side for a moment. Approach this with an open mind.
When I tell you it’s possible to run a multi-million dollar marketing
agency, that’s highly profitable, with a small number of clients and an
even smaller team…
You need to believe me.
Why?
Well - I’ve been doing it for 16 years now.
And more than that…
I’ve invested millions of dollars, and thousands of hours into learning
everything there is to know about how to run a marketing agency that
makes you money, and gets great results for your clients at the same time.
So… if you’re reading this, and you currently run an agency that
charges $1,000, $2,000 or even $5,000 / month for your services.
It’s time for you to stop doing that…
And start getting paid the high fees you truly deserve for the value
you provide.
It takes some effort, but this book contains the steps you can follow
and the lessons you must learn.
I want to show you exactly what we’re doing to get these results and
big clients paying large fees. These are my strategies and if you take them
and implement them, it will really drive your business to the next level.
You are going to change how you approach this business. I want you
to succeed. Let’s get into it.
Is this book for you?
If you are a marketing agency owner, who’s desperate to understand
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
the secrets of how to turn your agency into a multi-million dollar money
making machine, without having a ton of clients or a huge team, this book
is for you.
If you’ve tried yourself, or hired others to coach you and you’ve been
unhappy with the results, this book is for you.
Who is Ben Simkin?
As I mentioned before, I am the Founder and Owner of BusinessNET,
a highly renowned, highly profitable Marketing Agency in Australia with
clients from around the world.
Facebook themselves have labelled me a Facebook marketing expert. I’ll
shortly share with you my journey of how that recognition came about.
In December 2018, my agency got ranked by Facebook as one of the top
VIP Facebook advertisers on the planet. Not agencies, but amongst all
advertisers. This was based on how much we spend and the results we
achieve and other criteria such as our contribution to the community and
more. We didn’t apply, you can’t apply. They just emailed me and told me.
Now I get to go to the Facebook head offices every 3 months in Sydney,
Singapore and New York. They give us a de-brief on what they’re about to
do. We also get Video Calls with them every month, and sometimes every 2
weeks.
In these briefings we often get information in advance of what is going
to happen with the platforms, and often things that are never disclosed to the
public or other advertisers.
Today, I’m fortunate to live an amazing life in Brisbane, Australia. I’ve
achieved a lot in my career and I now want to share everything I know with
other agency owners. That way, you too can escape the mistakes that most
make, and live a life of freedom while adding tremendous value to your clients.
But the real question is…
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How on earth did I get here?
The truth is, the path that got me here hasn’t been straightforward.
Growing up in a lower middle-class family the idea of owning a business
was far outside of my consciousness and awareness. Nobody I knew had
a business, and growing up I had no inclination of ever being in business
myself.
My entire life, I’ve been driven by my intense curiosity and desire to
understand the things around me. I’ve always had the desire to be
masterful in anything I set my mind to… and I love trying to figure out
how to do things that others thought were impossible.
When I was 13 years old, my parents gathered up enough money to
buy me a second-hand computer. My curiosity was set on fire at that
moment. I wanted to, no, I just had to understand what made this device
work, and not just work, but how I could truly master it.
For hours and hours, all night long, every single night, I would be in
front of my computer, much to the dismay of my parents. When I wasn’t
at home tinkering on the computer, I was at school in the library reading
every thick textbook on the subject of computer science, hardware and
software programming.
By age 16, I’d self-learned 5 programming languages, written tens of
thousands of lines of code, and was starting to get asked for help to repair
my friends’ computers - which I did for free, since money has never been
a primary motivation for me.
I started to use my extensive skills to hack into the school’s computer
systems, but not to change my grades, since I had little interest in my
grades anyway. I would find all the different ways to hack in and play
pranks on my unsuspecting teachers. I would continually find new ways
to hack into the school systems while the IT teacher scrambled to close
each ‘back door’ I found.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
I eventually got caught and was sent home from school on an
indefinite suspension. Through a series of events I was eventually
allowed back at school some months later. Around that time my parents
got a strange phone call, asking if they would allow their son to be paid
to hack into a company’s computer system.
This company was a commercial real estate firm. Something had gone
very wrong as their disgruntled IT Manager had taken matters into his
own hands and locked the entire firm out of their own computers! As a
result this company was weeks away from going bankrupt since they
could no longer access their records, client files, collect rents or reconcile
trust accounts.
I went into this company’s offices over a weekend and hacked into
their systems. I restored access to the whole company by Monday. I got
paid $2,000, which as a 16 year old, felt really cool. In hindsight I should
have gotten paid a lot more money since I was their lifeline! The owner
who ran the company said to me, “You’re smart enough to run your own
company.” And eventually I did. In hindsight, that advice was payment
enough… priceless.
When I was 20, I started my own company. I realised right away I
was in over my head. Although I knew everything there is to know about
computer systems, I knew nothing about business. I decided that if I had
figured out how to use computers then it was possible to now figure out
how to do business.
Eventually, I discovered how to get clients, grow the business and
manage it. Business was great, I expanded it and leased increasingly
larger offices, while hiring more and more staff. Before I knew it, I was
treating myself to houses and fancy cars. We kept growing and I could
see no end to what was possible. That is until the Global Financial Crisis
interrupted that dream of mine.
Overnight our revenue dropped by 30% and I found myself in too
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deep with my enormous overheads. We went backwards, and fast! Before
I knew it, I owed $50,000 in back rent to my office landlord, over
$100,000 to Credit Card Companies and a lot more to the Tax Office. I
also had a long list of incidental invoices from contractors and suppliers
that I could not pay.
Determined to not let this beat me, I set out to turn the company
around and pay every last cent to everyone we owed money to. Within 6
months I was able to turn the business around to positive cashflow, and
within 18 months I paid everything back that I owed. Every cent! On top
of that, I had turned this business into a highly profitable, nimble business
that I was able to sell shortly after that for over $1 million dollars.
I’ll get to why this is important in just a moment. After the sale of my
business I took a little bit of time off and pondered my next career move.
That was when I started BusinessNET, my online marketing agency.
Online marketing was brand new in the early to mid 2000’s. One of
my IT customers had come to me and told me they wanted to get into
online marketing. I knew my client had run this little advertisement in the
newspaper since 1980 and it was generating him a lot of sales. Not
knowing anything about online marketing at the time, I did all that was
clear to me, so I scanned the ad from the newspaper and put it into an
email. I sent it out to a list of 10,000 people that we had “rented” (more
on that shortly). We generated $3 million dollars from the first email sent.
That was when I had a lightbulb moment. I was so excited about the
possibilities and what could be achieved...especially when I actually learned
how to do online marketing. But at the same time… I knew there had to be
a better way to run an agency. I had generated $3M for my client… and been
paid a mere flat fee in exchange. It reminded me of when I hacked into the
real estate company’s computer system at age 16. There had to be a better
way to get paid.
Around this time, I came to a realisation:
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
“I had to get paid for the VALUE I brought to my clients. Not the
time it took me to create a campaign for them.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but this philosophy would be a complete
game changer for me and my marketing agency.
Now, back to the email list. Pre-Social Media days, one of the main
ways to generate leads and clients over the Internet was to “rent” email
lists off people from a broker and send them an email. I know, it makes
me sound like a prehistoric dinosaur… but that’s all that was available
back then.
You’d rent a list of 10,000 people’s email addresses which all fit a
specific demographic, such as 30-45 year olds living in Sydney,
Australia. You’d send the email out and eventually people would reply
and ask for a phone call. They would go through your sales process on
the phone, you’d get the clients, and rinse and repeat.
One of the challenges with this was that we’d always “run out” of
email address lists we could send to, so we would market for a few months
and run out of lists. This would give us no choice but to wait and then
return to the same people and email them over and over again. There was
no consistency in this way of doing things, but there wasn’t much of a
choice in those days.
Then one day in 2009 it was announced Facebook would open up the
ability to advertise on their platform and use demographic options. I
instantly saw the opportunity, since it was exactly the same as what I was
doing with email, only there was not going to be any limits to the amount
of people I could get my advertising in front of.
So, just as I had approached everything in my life to this point, I set
my mind to master the art of Facebook Advertising, right from day one.
I have been able to help many people and many companies become
hugely successful using Facebook and Instagram Marketing. Over the last
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Benjamin D. Simkin
decade I’ve been able to achieve many notable accomplishments. Since
2009 I have generated over $2 billion in revenue using these Social Media
Platforms for myself and my clients. In 2016, I was named ‘The World’s
#1 Facebook Marketer’ by the Huffington Post, and have been featured
in countless publications such as Forbes and INC Magazine. And in 2018
Facebook themselves acknowledged my achievements and recognised
my agency BusinessNET as being one of the top advertisers in the World.
During this time I have been an investor in various businesses and an
advisor to businesses in many different industries. Many of which you are
familiar with.
I’ve written books about Facebook ads and the Facebook platform. But
this book is totally different. Inside, I’m going to reveal everything I know
about how to run an ads agency that gets paid based on the value it provides.
You’ll soon discover the simple processes and strategies that any agency
owner can use to blow past $1M per year in revenue with just 5 clients.
My agency turns over more than $7M per year with a team of just 6, and
a small number of clients. Inside this book, you’re going to learn exactly how
to do it yourself. Let’s carry on...
Testimonials
Don’t listen to my reasons alone. Listen to my past clients, who I
mentored in growing their marketing agencies. And now they’ve grown
their companies exponentially. Of course if you want to Google me
you’ll find hundreds more success stories and reviews.
One of my clients gave the following testimonial in a video we
recorded:
“It’s hard to believe that less than 2 years ago, I was
working by myself in the spare room of my house and really
struggling. Now we have great offices and great staff around
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
us helping us grow exponentially.” - Kim Barrett, Your Social
Voice
Not convinced? Understandable. You don’t want to waste your time
on a whole book.
Here is another testimonial from a marketer I helped grow their
agency:
We were certainly undervaluing some of the services we did.
We used to do just a flat fee, $500/month. Looking back this was
a terrible idea & I have no idea how I even came up with that
[Now we charge much more than that]”. -- Charley Valher,
Investor and Business Mogul
That should give you some background information on who I am,
what I’ve done and why you should listen to me.
I get it. In today’s day and age, there are so many fake guru’s who’ve
never even run a real business, that are teaching you, or trying to teach
you, how to be successful in business yourself.
As someone who’s built a multi-million dollar marketing agency and
sold a bunch of successful businesses - it’s frustrating.
It kills me to know people spend their hard earned money on advice
that not only isn’t helpful… but is misguided and just flat out wrong.
I wrote this book to give away everything I know, in as much detail
as possible, so you can finally understand the crucial mistakes agency
owners make, and how to solve them fast.
Life is short.
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I truly, wholeheartedly believe that if you don’t understand the value
you bring in your life to any situation, you can mess your whole life up.
You get limited opportunities in life to do something great. When they
arise, you need to understand the true value you provide, and you need to
be paid handsomely for it.
Your life depends on it. The health & wellbeing of your and your
family depends on it. And your clients depend on it too.
With that said, let’s get into it.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Chapter 1
The Marketing Agency Conundrum
rom the time I started my first business… I can honestly say I have
always viewed business differently to most people. Across almost
any industry, there are always a lot of assumptions made about the best
way to do things, how much you can charge, and what somebody will
pay.
F
For whatever reason, I have never subscribed to industry norms. I have
always seeked to optimise for outcomes that will provide the most value to
everyone involved. When it comes to running a marketing agency… this is
no different.
If you talk to any agency owner, I almost guarantee you they will tell
you some version of these same false beliefs that aren’t true.
“No client will pay you $10,000 / month or more to run Facebook Ads
for them”
“It’s not fair to charge that much to generate leads for someone”
“But what if I charge that much and the campaign doesn’t work?”
“If I try and charge high prices I will get rejected and lose credibility”
These are just a few of the things I hear agency owners believe that
are total rubbish. Of course you need to deliver results for your clients
and provide value.
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Of course you can’t charge high fees if there is no justification of what
they will get, or why it is in their best interest to pay you that much. But
the point I’m making here is this - these assumptions are costing you
dearly. It’s not that they aren’t true that’s hurting you. It’s that you believe
they are true when you’ve never challenged or tested any of them.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I started BusinessNET in 2005.
My first client sold investment properties. I rented a list of 10,000 people
for $3,000. I emailed them the exact same ad and offer that my client was
running in the newspaper. In doing so… I generated $3M in sales for my
client.
An outstanding result right? I was happy, and as you can imagine, the
client was stoked. I was paid $20,000. A flat fee for my services. Whilst
that might seem like great money when you first look at it… there’s a
problem here. I’ve provided $3M in value to my client. I have captured
less than 1% of that value as a fee. At that moment, I realised there was a
problem with the agency model.
In the 16 years since then, I’ve grown my marketing agency to over
$7M in annual revenue and coached hundreds of agency owners across
the world. Over the course of this journey, I have reflected many, many
times on that first client. It was like a lightbulb that went off in my mind
where I thought:
“Why am I getting paid $20,000, when I’m generating $3M in
revenue? Look how much value I’m bringing to this client and this
relationship.”
As I said earlier. If you don’t recognise the value you bring to a
situation… you can literally ruin your life. I truly believe it. You will end
up old and broke. Or with way less money than you should have… if you
knew how to properly capitalise on the value you are adding.
And in the moment, I had the epiphany that the marketing agency
model is broken. If you’ve been running your agency for any amount of
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time… you know exactly what I mean. Especially if you charge flat fees
or a fixed retainer. Even more so if you get paid for a percentage of ad
spend.
The model is broken for all parties involved. Here’s an example:
Take Barry. He runs a marketing agency where he generates leads for
clients in property, finance and accounting markets. He charges $2,000 a
month to run ads for his clients.
There are 2 stakeholders in this transaction.
1. Barry who runs the agency - working both in the business with
clients, and on the business to grow it
2. The clients of Barry’s agency
And the problem with the agency model is - both of these stakeholders
are getting a raw deal.
You may look at this and think:
“What are you talking about Ben? I run this model, I make money,
my clients get results… what's the problem?”
I’m glad you asked. Let me get into it:
Barry starts his marketing agency and he’s excited to serve his clients.
He’s an expert at generating leads through Facebook and he knows that
he can get great results.
Barry charges $2,000 / month, and his first goal is to get 5 clients and
reach $10,000 / month.
Then you have Barry’s clients.
Professional business owners in the property, finance and accounting
industries. They are hard working, service based business owners, hungry
to grow their companies and invest in marketing services to generate them
more leads.
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Here’s what tends to happen:
Barry brings on 5 clients. He has a minimum of 5 campaigns to
manage, in some cases more because some clients will want to run ads to
different offers. Barry gets his $10,000 per month, but then of course he
has expenses.
Barry has to pay taxes and invest in software, accounting, a VA to
help him with admin tasks plus more. With the revenue he’s generating,
Barry can’t afford to hire someone to run ads for his clients - we won’t
have any money left to live off. His only option is to work harder to bring
on more clients, so he has more revenue, so eventually he can outsource
his work.
And that’s when Barry hit’s his next ceiling. His resources, which were
already stretched thin… get even worse. He was already split across 5
different clients, but now his time is further limited. He has to generate more
leads, get on more sales calls, hire & train people to work for him, create
reports for his clients AND still find time to work on their campaigns.
All of a sudden, Barry is working a ton more, if anything making less,
constantly putting out fires and dealing with client campaign problems…
all to make less in the process.
As the agency operator, Barry is on a measly hourly rate, stressed out
of his mind, going nowhere fast, with no real time to devote to his clients
campaigns.
As the agency owner as well, Barry can’t scale his business, buy his
time back, outsource the low priority tasks, and grow the value of his
company.
Barry is in a situation that I call “The Hole Quandary”.
Here’s how I look at it:
If you’re stuck in a hole and you have a shovel… how do you get out
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of it? I dare suggest that digging faster isn’t the solution. You need a new
strategy.
If you've got 10 clients or 50 clients you're charging $2000 / month,
the way to get out of that is not to get another 50 clients paying you $2000
/ month. Because all you’re doing is digging that hole to be bigger.
In your own agency, if you charge $1k or $2k or even $3k per month
per client, and your way of getting to $100k a month is to stack 30 to 50
to 100 clients at that price point… you’re in serious trouble.
And it’s all because of where you’re starting off at. You can’t
optimise this model. You may as well fire every client and the people that
work for you. You need to change what you are doing. But the problem
is… that’s not what your average “Barry” does. Barry just curses the
agency model and says it’s the problem. “I know the solution… I’m going
to start an e-commerce brand. I’ll get paid purely on performance so I can
make more money and operate with a better model”.
I’ll address this later on in the book… but trust me, switching business
models is one of the worst ideas you could ever come up with.
So as you can see. Barry’s goals as the agency owner are heavily
compromised by his current model as the agency operator.
Oh and Barry’s clients? They pay a monthly fee - which doesn’t buy
them enough of Barry’s time to really optimise the campaign and get the best
results for them. Inevitably, over the time, the results continue to get worse,
until they fire Barry and find a new agency.
If you’ve been running your agency for any amount of time, then you
know exactly what I mean. The agency merry go round does just that - it
goes round, and round, and round.
Now, you might think I’ve just made up this scenario to articulate my
point… so I want to give you a real example.
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A few years ago, I had an agency owner come to me who was still
trying to get his model right.
He joined my Marketing Agency Accelerator™ as he hadn’t quite
worked out what to do after trying several different ways to get paid.
Eventually he settled on his goal.
“Get 50 clients paying $1,000 per month each.”
He was super keen to grow his agency, and he’d already signed up 4
clients.
When I pointed out the logistical nightmare of where he was headed
he was visually shook. He hadn’t thought through what he was entering
into.
Luckily he started working with me and we quickly turned that around
and set him on the right path.
I see this stuff happen all the time, and it's the fastest way to ensure
you end up trapped in a business that doesn’t help you or your clients get
what you want. So take my advice and avoid it like the plague.
To summarise:
The problem with marketing agency’s is they don’t charge enough to
be able to provide a high quality of service to their clients. They aren’t
paid enough for the value they provide. The client gets bad results, the
agency doesn’t make enough profit, and the business owner is on the fast
track to absolutely nowhere.
Which leaves you, the agency owner, with one question…
“Ben, what can we do about it?”
I thought you’d never ask. Buckle up for the ride.
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Chapter 2
The #1 Thing Clients Hate About
Agency’s
I need to kick this chapter off by asking you a question.
It’s important.
Ever picked up a client that has come to you because they are
disgruntled with their current agency and want to find a better alternative?
I know I have, plenty of times. Well - if you’ve experienced this, pay
attention.
When the client of another agency comes to you, complaining about
the agency they are working with… what is the #1 thing they complain
about?
You should be able to answer this in 2 seconds flat. There may be a
myriad of things the agency did that the client wasn’t happy with, but I
guarantee you, it’s the same main complaint, every single time.
The LACK of results the agency generated. Right?
Clients will never complain about the fee, they will always complain
about the results. I mean of course, you will get clients that complain
about fees… but think of it like this.
If you walked to a random business owner in the street and said to
them: “I’ll give you $1M of new revenue for your business in the next 12
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Benjamin D. Simkin
months, if I can keep 25% of it. Would this interest you?”
How many business owners would say no to that?
Not many at all. I mean, realistically none, unless there were extenuating
circumstances where they couldn’t take the clients on or what have you.
This further articulates my point. Not many business owners out there
will say: “I hate this marketing agency we’re working with. They’re making
us millions of dollars but the fees they charge to produce the results are too
high”.
It never happens. But they will ALWAYS complain about the fee, if
there are no or sub par results.
When you hear someone complain about another marketing agency, it’s
rarely about the fee they were charging, but about the results that were
generated.
And if they are complaining about the fee - it’s because there were no
results generated.
Here’s an example.
A few years after I started my marketing agency, I signed a client that
was the owner of a property company. He also happened to be one of the
richest people in the state of Queensland, Australia. They were paying my
agency BusinessNET, $24,000 / month in fees.
Yep… $24,000 / month as the retainer. That may seem like a high
figure, but bare with me… all will be revealed in this book.
They were a client of mine for about 18 months, until one day, they
abruptly terminated the agreement. I was totally confused. We’d been
getting them great results and they had never once complained about the
quality of leads or anything of that nature.
I wondered what had gone wrong, but I never heard back from them.
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2 months of silence occurred, until one day out of the blue I got a phone
call, and the owner summoned me to a board meeting with the heads of
the company.
I had no idea why they were calling me or what they even wanted, but
I was curious so I went along to the meeting.
I sat down with them all in their boardroom, and the owner looked
across at me, with this defeated look on his face and said. “Well Ben, I’ve
got to be honest with you. I don’t know how on earth you do what you do
- but your leads are outstanding. We stopped working with you and tried
to find someone who could do what you do for cheaper, but we didn’t get
any results at all. So as much as we’d like to pay less, we want to reengage your services”.
They became a client of my agency for the next 5 years.
This furthers my point - clients won’t complain about your fee. They
will only complain about the results - or lack thereof. Now, here’s what
you need to know:
This client was only happy to pay this amount, because they were
making millions of dollars per year by working with my agency. My
message in this book is absolutely NOT to just charge your clients a lot.
You need to provide huge value, but when you do, you MUST be
adequately compensated for it.
Later in this book, I will reveal more about exactly how to do this.
But for now, you need to understand that there is no reason why you can’t
charge big fees for the services you provide.
To do so… you need to understand what a FEE actually is.
It is merely a payment received when a service of value is provided.
Now that’s very basic of course… but stick with me:
The willingness to pay a price is determined by the “perception” of
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Benjamin D. Simkin
positive utility by the customer.
Or in simpler terms - the willingness to pay a price is based on the
perceived value to the customer.
Here’s what I mean by that:
You can go to a convenience store and pay $5 for a premium, high
quality bottle of water.
You would drink that bottle of water, but you wouldn’t wash your dog
with it. Why?
Because you perceive that water you drink is worth more than the water
you wash your dog with.
The bottled water has higher utility - or put more simply, it’s more useful.
Here’s another example you marketers will understand. Gary Halbert is
a copywriting legend. I’m sure you know the name. He was affectionately
known as the “Prince of Print” and one of the greatest direct response
copywriters that ever lived.
In The Boron Letters, a series of letters he wrote to his son Bond, who
happens to be a personal friend of mine, Gary said this:
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Think about it. A starving crowd is the best advantage as they will be
the ones most likely to buy a hamburger.
But I want to take this example one step further. Who is going to pay
the MOST for the hamburger?
Someone who hasn’t eaten in 3 days. Or someone who just sat down
for a 7 course degustation?
The first, obviously. And why is that? Because it is much more useful
to them, then it is to someone who isn’t hungry.
There is a much greater positive utility to a starving man than a full
one. Which takes me back to my original point.
Value is a matter of perception. The fees someone will pay are based
on the perception of value.
I will expand on this idea in coming chapters, but for now - I want
you to take away 2 things.
a) Clients don’t complain about fees. They complain about a lack
of results.
b) Value is a matter of perception. Perceived value is the basis of
fees
Now, let’s get onto an important topic.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Chapter 3
Business Models. Should you even
run an agency?
B
efore we go any further… I want to address an important topic. And
it starts with a question.
So here goes:
Are you in the right business? So many agency owners I know have
contemplated this question in depth.
They’ve thought about how broken the marketing agency model is.
Maybe they haven’t realised that they need to get paid more for the value
they bring. Maybe they are just tired of clients, the stress and pressure to
create results, or the endless hammer they seem to be under. Either way I
get it.
And that’s why I ask… are you in the right business?
Ever thought about running an e-commerce brand? Switching your
agency to a pure performance model? Delving into affiliate marketing?
Or any of the other myriad of different businesses you could pursue.
In fact, I don’t even really need to write this… because I know you’ve
thought about it. You’ve seen people in different groups on Facebook
share screenshots of their Shopify stores and pondered how good it would
be to escape the throws of agency life and client work.
So I’ll ask the question again.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Should you be running a marketing agency? Maybe there’s a better
business model out there for you.
Here’s my perspective on this. In fact, I’ll answer it with a story.
Joe Polish is a world renowned marketer from Phoenix, Arizona.
These days, he runs a marketing mastermind called Genius Network.
If you’ve been in the marketing world longer than 5 minutes, then I’m
sure you know about Joe.
However, when he first got into business, he was a nobody that ran a
carpet cleaning company.
At the time, his business was bleeding money and failing badly. It was
just a matter of time before he went under.
Joe was time poor, stressed out and totally overworked. One day, when
he was desperately trying to work out how to get his business firing, a buddy
of his convinced him to take a day off and come out jet skiing.
As much as Joe wanted to at the time, he had way bigger fish to fry. His
business was in serious trouble.
But Joe’s buddy told him that his friend who owned the jetski was a
successful millionaire business owner. This piqued Joe’s curiosity, so he
decided to go along, hoping he could get the advice he desperately
needed, to get his business back on track.
Joe meets the millionaire, and they get talking about his business. Joe
briefly describes the predicament he’s in, how his business is failing and
he’s on a road to nowhere.
Desperate for some advice, Joe told this guy how he believed that the
carpet cleaning business was a terrible business to be in. Despite knowing
everything there was to know about cleaning carpet, being certified in his
training and having the best equipment on the market. Joe asked this guy
what he needed to know to make a lot of money.
23
Benjamin D. Simkin
Joe said:
"What business would you suggest I go into where I could make a lot
of money and turn my situation around?"
Joe was shocked at the answer he heard.
The millionaire said to him, "Joe, are there people in your industry
making money?"
After thinking for a second, Joe said “well yeah, of course there are.
I even know of a few companies in Phoenix making over a million bucks
a year, but they have been around for years. They have lots of employees.
Those companies are well established in the market. Those guys have
name recognition. But, I'm much newer and it's harder for me."
What the millionaire said next changed the way Joe viewed business
forever.
"If there are people in your industry making money and you're not
then there is nothing wrong with your business. There is something wrong
with you."
That was a blow to Joe’s ego. And still he persisted with his excuses.
He tried to explain that the millionaire didn’t understand the full picture.
But the successful guy continued...
"If there are people making money in your industry and you're not,
then there is nothing wrong with the 'business' there's something wrong
with you. You are like most people I meet who think 'the grass is always
greener on the other side'. And if you decide to go into another business,
what's going to happen is, you are going to spend the next 6 months, 1
year, 2 years, learning the technical skills of another business, just so you
can go out and repeat the same mistakes and bad business habits that
caused you to fail in this business. So what you need to do, young man,
is you need to FIRST learn fundamental business principles and learn
24
Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
how to make THIS business work. Because once you do that, you can go
into any business or industry and be successful in it."
Joe would later explain this moment to be one of the most pivotal
moments of his entire life. Had he not had this conversation on this day
out jet skiing, he may never have become the grand success he is, helping
thousands of business owners around the world with his work.
This was a lightbulb moment for Joe. And it should be for you too if
you’ve ever considered giving up on the agency model.
Lightbulb moment right?
So here’s what you need to ask yourself.
Is there a marketing agency owner making $1M a year? Yep.
Is there an agency owner making $10M a year? Yep.
So it's not the industry or the business model that’s the problem. It’s
you. It's what you're doing at the moment. This is a very important lesson
to understand. Stick with your agency, or you’ll never be successful at
anything.
The key takeaways:
a) If you don’t stick to the business you are in right now, you will
never be successful
b) Is there an agency owner making the money you want to make
right now? Of course. That means you are the problem, not
the business model
c) You need to find a mentor that has already done what you
want to do
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Chapter 4
The Ethical Dilemma of Pricing
Models
I
n chapter 2, I talked about the thing every client hates most about
agencies: getting no results. Then we talked about value, how it
pertains to fees and the importance of staying in the business you’re in.
It’s time to get into Pricing Models.
More specifically, the ethical dilemma they create. And then in a later
chapter, I’ll reveal the 8 different ways any agency can get paid for
marketing services.
When it comes to pricing models, let me give you an example:
One of my early mentors, Joseph… once shared this story with me.
I was in my early 20s, and he was relaying stories to me about his life
in corporate finance. I’ve never forgotten the first story he ever told me.
He worked at a bank. A local artist had put up his paintings for sale
in the bank, for $140, $200, $250 and so on. For months, they sat there
on the wall and not one of them got sold. One day, Joseph went to look
at the paintings, and he bought all of them.
Joseph left them on the walls of the bank, but he changed the prices
to $1,400, $2,000 and $2,500. Within a week - every single one of them
was sold.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
The second story was just as impactful.
He was telling me about the process of signing finance clients. He
would charge a $500 fee for doing all the paperwork. Every client would
complain about this fee and he’d end up doing all the work for free, just
to keep them happy.
One day he was totally fed up with this, so he decided to run a test.
He put his price up to $5,000. From that day forward, he never got a single
complaint. All of his customers paid the fee and saw value in getting his
expertise to help them.
I learned serious lessons from both of these stories. You need to
charge what you are worth. People will take you more seriously when you
charge a premium.
Just like my client who cancelled on the services that were $24,000
per month. Once he tried to get a cheaper service provider, and realised
the service wasn’t good… he was more than happy to pay for the value
that my agency provided.
Now - at the same time. This may produce an ethical dilemma for you.
How can you 10x your price like that?
Why should you be able to charge so much for the marketing services
you offer?
Great questions. I’ll get to them in just a moment.
For now - let’s revisit the dilemma Barry was having. You see, in the
first chapter, I talked about Barry. Poor old Barry, his low pricing model,
and the dark path he was headed down as a result.
You see, when it comes to pricing models and how you are paid…
not only is there negative consequences for you, the client and your
business…
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Benjamin D. Simkin
But there is also an ethical and moral quandary of low fees. Here’s
why:
The standard ‘Modus Operandi’ of Agency owners, is to charge either
a flat fee for their services, or to charge this plus a percentage of ad spend.
This very quickly becomes an ethical dilemma. On one hand, a flat fee
constrains the amount of time, energy and even “thinking” time you can
allow to give to that client, thereby limiting their results and outcomes.
However, if you command a higher fee, you’re able to devote far more
resources because the amount of time and energy you can give to the
client is practically limitless. This is one of a myriad of benefits you will
receive when you start charging higher fees.
Then there is the ethically dubious method of getting paid a
percentage of ad spend. Think about it. If you charge $2,000 / month plus
10% of ad spend… it raises this question:
Could the client get the same or better results from a lower ad spend?
The agency’s goal is to increase the ad spend. They justify it by telling
the client… “we’re only spending more money if the ads are profitable…
so it’s in our best interest to get it working and spending more so we both
can make more.
But the goal of the agency is merely more spend. It’s not to reduce
the lead cost or CPA. They need to provide results, but only enough to
justify burning through more of the clients cash.
The ethical dilemma arises because of one simple fact: The goals of
the client and the agency are not aligned
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
If the goals are not in alignment, that is, if both client and agency are
not facing in the same direction, then there is a conflict of goals and
pursuits.
When the client and agency have the same goal: that is, to maximise
value for the client, and pay the agency handsomely as a result, then their
ships are both pointing in the same direction.
When the goals are aligned, and value is being maximised, and the
agency owner is sharing in those gains, the tiny scope can be expanded
and more energy and creativity can be afforded within that client
relationship.
That’s a winning relationship that only gets better over time, not
worse.
I want to switch gears now and talk about something that some people
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Benjamin D. Simkin
may think is controversial. In my opinion however… it’s undeniable.
It’s what I call… the “invisible worth” of the marketing consultant.
Let’s be real for a moment. There is hardly a segment of people on
the planet that are as educated, yet commoditized as marketing agency
owners and marketing consultants.
Think about this.
People in the marketing industry are some of the most invested and
highly educated people on the planet.
They continually research, buy new programs, attend seminars and
events, and pay to be a part of communities. Their industry is constantly
changing and they are always making an effort to stay up to date.
Compare this to other industries. Plumbers, or even professionals
such as accountants, don’t spend close to the same amount of money and
time into their continuing education, to be good at what they do.
Marketers put so much time, effort and energy into being valuable.
Into having a highly valuable skill set. Yet they never charge anywhere
near what they know they are worth.
If you want to increase your prices, you need to recognise this value
and start getting paid for it.
I suggest making a list of all the continued education you’ve done up
until this point, and you’ll recognise the value and knowledge alone you
bring to a client.
If you take nothing else from this chapter, then remember:
a) People will take you more seriously when you charge a higher
fee
b) The traditional agency model doesn’t work because the goals
of the agency and client are not aligned
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
c) Marketing consultants are some of the most invested & highly
educated people on the planet. Don’t become another one that
is commoditized.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Chapter 5
The new paradigm for agencies
f you haven’t realised by now - I’m not a fan of the way most people
run their agency. Mainly because they are getting the raw end of the
deal. Not only that, but they can make a lot more money, simply by
adopting a new paradigm.
I
Now… what is this new paradigm?
Well, that's the point of this chapter. I’ll get to it in just a moment.
But I want to start by sharing a story about a plumber, maybe you’ve
heard this before.
There is an old story that goes something like this:
A man calls a plumber to his home to solve a problem with one of his
pipes. The plumber looks around and listens for about 10 minutes, and
then he grabs a pipe wrench and hits a pipe 3 or 4 times in the same place.
The problem is instantly solved. The water is running again, and the
man's issue is gone. He’s super happy. The plumber then hands the man
his bill, and the man is shocked to see that the invoice is for $200.
The man objects, “How on earth can you charge $200 for simply
banging on a pipe 3 or 4 times with a pipe wrench? I demand that you
clarify this bill. Please send me an itemised version of the invoice.”
The plumber produces a new invoice, breaking down the elements of
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
his pricing, to better explain what he is charging for. The man picks up
the invoice, and it now reads:
Item 1: Hitting the pipe with a pipe wrench – $2.00
Item 2: Knowing to hit the pipe with the pipe wrench – $99.00
Item 3: Knowing where and how to hit it – $99.00
There’s a key lesson here and it applies almost perfectly to marketing
agency owners. You must charge a client for the value you provide.
In terms of hitting a pipe with a wrench… virtually anyone can do
that. It’s not overly valuable as a standalone activity. Hell - you could
probably convince a stranger off the street to come and hit a pipe with a
wrench for you for free. That’s how unremarkable the task is. There’s
really no value in it.
But here’s the issue:
The valuable part is knowing you need to hit it in the first place. And
then… knowing where and how to hit it. Plumbers do apprenticeships that
last anywhere from 4 to 7 years depending on their specific field. They
study at TAFE and other tertiary institutions to become masters of their
craft, so they can go out in their field and provide value to their customers.
Learning a skill set that takes up to 4 years to master… helps a
plumber know when and where to hit the pipe. In the example above, the
plumber is charging in direct reflection to the value he provides - which
is knowing where and how to hit the pipe. That’s where the real value
was created. If the plumber priced his services only for the actual work
he did – and not the knowledge and experience he applied to the work–
his prices would be far lower and he wouldn’t capture the real value he
provides.
This is a fundamental realisation you must have when it comes to
business. It's vitally important.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Peter Thiel has a great quote about business. In fact, it’s what I
consider to be: “The Universal Formula of Business”.
It’s super simple, but crucial to understand. Here goes:
“X” is the value your business creates for its customers and clients.
“Y” is the percentage of X that your business actually captures.
X and Y are independent variables.
This is vital to understand. What you get paid from your clients is
merely a percentage of the value you provide. If you provide no value…
you won’t get paid anything.
But if you provide value and don’t capture enough of it for yourself,
you won’t be able to grow, hire people or be adequately compensated for
what you provide. Over time you will resent your clients and your
business, and you will no longer enjoy it. Fair exchange is the medium
that the entire world runs off. Your business is no different.
In the next chapter, I’m going to talk about why it is so important for
you to charge MORE. I genuinely believe this. Of course it’s important
to charge more so you are paid fairly for the value you provide. But
there’s a ton of people who are affected if you don’t.
I’ll get to that later.
At the start of this book, I talked about my IT company. Specifically,
when I was 16 years old, I got my first paying client.
I was hired by a commercial real estate company to save their
business. They were locked out of their entire company system because
there was a dispute with their IT manager. He had changed all the
passwords and fled the state.
They couldn’t access a single file on any of their computers. As the
situation stood when I arrived, they were out of business and it was a
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
matter of time before they would have gone bankrupt.
I had a reputation for my hacking ability at the time, so I got called in
to hack into their computer system. I went in over a weekend and restored
access to everyone in the company. I was only 16 years old and I got paid
$2,000 for my work.
Now, at the time, I thought this was amazing. I’m sure you remember
what it was like to be 16. $2,000 felt like a lot of money. Especially at a
time when most people I was friends with were barely making $14 per
hour.
But as I had success in my business career, and learned what I know
now, I look back on that time in my life and realise that I was totally
ripped off.
I mean think about this. This company had 50 employees, who all
depended on the success of the business to get paid. With that money,
they paid their mortgages, provided for their families, put food on the
table, and covered medical bills.
The owners of this company were wealthy businessmen, and they had
no way of getting into their entire operating system. They couldn’t access
their money, they couldn’t pay anyone, they were totally stuck. Years and
years of building their business up was all about to come crumbling
down…
Until they found Ben. Now look, I’m not trying to over-dramatise this
or make myself sound like a superhero, but my point stands: How much
value was I adding to their business?
I knew I could hack into their computer system easily. I could have
charged them $200,000 for the same service, and it STILL would have
been cheap for them.
Now - before you say: “But Ben, that’s totally immoral and unethical,
how can you charge that much, it’s not worth it”... or whatever excuse
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Benjamin D. Simkin
you come up with - you have to realise that the way we have been taught
to charge for our advice is wrong.
You need to start charging for the value you provide. That is the new
paradigm of running a marketing agency.
If I said to you tomorrow, I know where you can buy a $5,000,000
house for $100,000...
Would you pay me $1,000,000 for the answer? I guarantee you would.
Even if you didn’t have any money. Why? Because you know that if you
can come up with $1,100,000, you will make $3,900,000 in an instant.
You don’t care what I’m charging because you know the value I’m
providing to you is huge.
It’s the same when it comes to your marketing agency. If I know for
certain that I’m going to generate you 20 clients per month for the next
10 years using my marketing knowledge and ability…
Would you pay me 25% of what those 20 clients per month are worth?
You’d be silly not to. In fact, you’d be much worse than silly, but I’m not
going to call you names in my book.
These are the lessons I had to learn the hard way, through routinely
undercharging until I finally realised there was a better way to run my
businesses.
Let me illustrate this with another story.
In my first year of business, one of the clients I took on was a Personal
Trainer. He was paying me $3,000 / month.
At the time it seemed like a lot, but the truth is, I was way
undercharging.
I took his business to capacity within a month. And guess what
happened?
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
He quit my services. So not only was I not getting paid a lot of money
per month - but he also only stuck around for a month because once he
got his clients he left.
After that happened I reflected on why I took this client on. It didn’t
make any sense to run my business this way.
I'm adding so much value and they are getting my entire marketing
process and cancelling. If you’ve been running your agency for any
amount of time, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. In fact, I
bet this has happened to you.
You’ve lost clients for under performance. And I bet you’ve lost them
for performing too well, which completely sucks.
This is why you need to charge MORE. And the key to doing so… is
increasing your minimum fee.
This might sound counterintuitive… but stick with me.
If you’re charging a client $1,000 / month for marketing services,
you’re never going to get $20k per month clients.
Your mind will have too much of a financial ceiling on what is
possible. You would feel horribly incongruent to charge $20,000 per
month for something you’re charging $1,000 per month for.
And the same goes in reverse. If your minimum client price is $20,000
per month… why on earth would you waste your time taking on a client
for $1000?
You wouldn’t, right?
And this is why it’s so important to increase your minimum price. My
agency will not take on a client for less than $8,000 per month. We just
don’t do it. It’s not our market. Protecting this limit is crucially important.
It’s about the standards you have in life.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
If you slip and start taking on clients for $3,000 - $5,000 per month,
you will never be able to increase your maximum.
By increasing your prices, you start to increase your internal self
worth.
Your own sense of the value that you provide. That’s why this concept
is so important to understand.Your lowest price determines your highest
price.
Ever heard of the $20,000 Rolls Royce?
No, of course you haven’t. Just like you haven’t heard of the $20,000
Ferrari. Why would luxury car companies that sell motor vehicles for
$500,000+ start selling them for cheap?
It would devalue their brand for starters, but it also just doesn’t make
any sense from a business standpoint.
I hope you get my point here. The fastest way to increase the amount
of money you are paid by a client, is to increase the minimum possible
amount you charge. Try it and thank me later.
In the upcoming chapters I’m going to speak more about the practical
application of this. How to select the right clients, the key “buyer
indicators” and even the sales process you must follow to justify higher
fees.
But for now… let’s recap the major talking points from chapter 5:
a) Agencies need to get paid for the value they provide. That is
the new paradigm of business in 2021.
b) “X” is the value your business creates for its customers and
clients. “Y” is the percentage of X that your business actually
captures.
c) The basis of any fee is the perceived value to the client
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Chapter 6
Why you need to charge more
hen I run my Marketing Agency Accelerator™ events, I often
pose this question:
W
Would you rather be underpaid or overrated? If they were your only
2 options, which would you rather be?
Now, I’m not saying you need to be one or the other - it’s a line from a
Kanye West song in fact, but I think this is an important philosophical
question - if these were the only 2 options which one would you prefer?
I kept it this way because a lot of people don’t want to overcharge and
one of those reasons they are underpaid is because they feel like they are
not worth it. I want to show you how to make it worth it for people to pay
you more, and to give you the confidence to do it.
Let me share a quick story.
I’ve always instinctively thought in terms of maximising profits and
working out how to charge more. It started when I was 12 years old. At
age 12 I got an after-school job working at a bakery, washing dishes. I
was paid $2 per hour. It was gruelling work scrubbing pots and pans.
After 2 weeks I came in one day and the owner sat me down. She told me
that she couldn’t keep me any more because I was too slow. She handed
me $40 for my 2 weeks of work.
I scrounged up another $9 and headed to Kmart where I bought a
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Gameboy for $49. Later on I bought a “23 in 1” game for $15. It had 23
great games. I loved that thing, played it every day and after about 2 years
I put it up for sale in the local newspaper for $99 as that was the maximum
price you could put on an item if you wanted to get a free ad.
Here’s the crazy part - I sold it the next day for $100 to a nervous dad
who forgot his kids birthday. That was my first foray into copywriting
and pricing and a success.
I’m sharing that story because most people would have sold it for less
than they bought it for, factoring in all sorts of ‘reasons’ why they should
do that. But when it comes to pricing you need to throw out the rule book.
This is exactly the point I was making in the last chapter about the value
I added when hacking into the computer systems. The basis of any fee is
the PERCEIVED value, not some arbitrary value like the time it will take.
The reality is - you owe it to yourself, your future, your family and
your staff to increase your price points. It’s not about overcharging your
customers either. The reason I wrote this book is to explain the new
paradigm of how to price your services… and also to show you how to
increase the value of what you sell so you can command a higher fee.
If you happen to be undercharging, I want to give you the confidence
to charge what you are worth. Getting paid more has many benefits &
price affects profit more than anything else, more than cutting costs, more
than efficiency and even more than marketing.
For example, take a look at the following table. It shows how much
your profit is influenced by small changes in pricing.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Units
COG
S
Price
Discount
Profit
Extra Volume
Required
350
$500
$2,500
0%
$700,000
0
350
$500
$2,500
10%
$612,000
50
350
$500
$2,500 Increase by 10%
$787,500
-78
A price increase of 10% will increase profit by $87,500. An increase
in investment on marketing by 10% would only increase profit by
$55,000. One of the biggest business killing myths that most people tell
themselves is “We’ll make it up in volume!”. It’s simply not true.
Here’s 20 reasons why you need to charge more:













To make more money so you can provide a better life for your
family
So you can pay your staff more money, so they can also help their
family
Do good things for your community and donate more money to
charity
Have more money to invest in marketing
Be able to grow and scale your company with greater ease
Invest more in training for you and your staff
Effects on price increase go straight the bottom line, the increase
goes straight to the profit section of your P&L statement
Position yourself as the best solution for your customers and
clients, given that price often influences the perception of quality
Don’t have to compete on the myth of a high volume business
To build a team you need profit
Avoid stagnation in your business
More to invest outside and build your wealth
Innovation
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Benjamin D. Simkin










Expansion
Security
Prepare for tough times
More respect
Attract better clients to your business
More satisfaction for yourself and your team
More flexibility
Need less clients, provide better service
So you don’t need to take on low end clients that bleed your
resources
So you can spend more money to acquire the right clients
When it comes to pricing - Warren Buffet said it better than anyone
else.
Warren Buffet’s Pricing Power Test
“The single most important decision in evaluating a business is
pricing power, If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing
business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business. And if you have
to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10 percent, then
you’ve got a terrible business.” - Warren Buffett
Every marketing agency can raise their prices without losing to
competitors, if they know what they are doing, and how to articulate the
value they offer to their clients. Something that I will cover at a later point
in this book.
Now, before we go any further, there’s an elephant in the room that
needs to be addressed. Why do agency owners make poor pricing
decisions to begin with?
The reality is, there’s 2 reasons why:
a) Agency owners start off subconsciously thinking in terms of
getting paid hourly.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
How many hours will it take to complete the work for the client?
We’ve been conditioned to think this way as a society, since all of us
were very young. Maybe it’s because it's how we were paid in our first
jobs, or it's how we pay our employees. Maybe it's simply the most logical
way of doing things. After all we are running a business and need to
calculate things based on metrics… right?
After they’ve done that to determine their pricing, they make the next
fatal mistake.
a) They reduce their quote to “what THEY THINK the client will
accept”.
How ridiculous is this. But if you’re anything like most agencies, then
you’ve probably done it. You gauge what you can charge based on their
revenue and what you think they can afford.
The unfortunate reality is - most agency owners would make more
money, have less stress and a better lifestyle, if they just worked for
someone else. I think it’s fair to say that everyone knows trading your
time for money is not a good move.
The new paradigm, as I mentioned earlier, is to charge in terms of the
value that you add, which in this case, is a percentage of the cashflow you
will generate the client, upfront.
In order to do this effectively, so you can charge more, you need to
approach your entire business, and the conversations you have with your
clients, as a high value business consultant.
I don’t view myself as a “marketer” or a “copywriter” or even just a
“Facebook Ads” guy. I approach every client I speak with as a high value
marketing consultant, that is here to help them increase the value of their
business.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
The reality is, most marketing agency owners are selling based on fear
and scarcity. They do whatever they can to get a client because their self
worth and self esteem is low. They don’t believe they are truly worth it.
When it comes to charging more, imagine this:
You talk to 100 people that want to sign up to be an agency client for
$1000 per month. You say yes. Even if you know there are some clients
in there that you won’t get results for. Now compare that to charging
$10,000 per month for a client. You speak to 100 and you are really
confident you can get results for 10. You say no to 90. You’ve now got
10% of the clients as above.
You’re making the same money. And you can focus on getting great
results for the 10 clients. The reason most agency owners can’t grow their
business is because they need the money and must take on the client. All
this does is keep you trapped and unable to do your job properly, because
you need the client and are afraid of losing them.
There are other reasons agency owners make poor pricing decisions.
They’re afraid of what the client will think of them. They don’t believe
they are worth it. They aren’t uniquely different to anyone else in their
market. The list goes on.
Here are the big takeaways from Chapter 6:
a) You need to charge more. One of the biggest lies business
owners tell themselves is “we’ll just make it up on volume”
b) There are at least 20 reasons why you should charge more.
Nonetheless to improve the life of your family
c) Agency owners make poor pricing decisions because they
think it's best to charge hourly and they are afraid their clients
won’t accept their prices
By now, I’m sure you understand my point here. You absolutely must
charge more. Up until this point however, I’ve kept the book fairly
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
philosophical. It’s time to get into the meat of things and talk about how
to establish value based fees, and the different ways you can get paid.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Chapter 7
How to Establish Value Based Fees
C
harley Valher was like many of the business owners that choose to
join my Marketing Agency Accelerator
He had a digital marketing agency that had already seen some success.
He had clients, money coming in, and had hired 2 employees. He also had
the drive and ambition to grow his agency further, and become a player
in the industry. But then reality stopped all his dreams right in their tracks.
He realized along the way he had made some massive errors in his
business. Something was keeping him from growing any further. And if
he didn’t fix it, he’d be going nowhere fast. He’d spend the next 40 years
going from minor client to minor client, never able to hit the next level.
Until he’d be forced to retire from exhaustion. Broke and having spent
his life hunched over the laptop.
And the very worst part…
He wasn’t even sure what those mistakes were! And without knowing
what the problem was, he was completely helpless to fix it.
Luckily, once he joined the Marketing Agency Accelerator he got the
clarity that he needed. It turned out that there were 2 big things holding
Charley back.
Charley’s first problem was that he had partly won his clients by
competing on price. “We were certainly undervaluing some of the
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services we did.” “We used to do just flat fee, $500/month. Which
looking back was a terrible idea and I have no idea how I even came up
with that”.
To make things worse, even at these low rates he still wasn’t at
capacity with his clients!
Together that led to a situation that far too many business owners find
themselves in.
Because of his low rates he had to service his clients himself. He didn't
have the budget to hire someone who could run his clients' advertising
without him. But at the same time - he still had to spend a good chunk of
each day generating new business for his agency..
Between these 2 activities, he had absolutely no spare time left. He
was too busy with the day-to-day to focus on growth, or even just to take
time to relax.
Luckily, Charley knew he couldn’t keep going as he was, and sought
out a mentor to help him correct his mistakes and grow his Agency. He
joined the Accelerator, and over the next few months, Charley learned
how to 10x his prices, and finally get paid for the value he brought to the
table.
He established value based fees, brought on more clients and was able
to hire an effective team to delegate and outsource tasks too.
In doing so, Charley was able to increase the value of his agency and
exit it for a great result.
Now - the reason I started with this story is simple. I wanted to show
the practical application of increasing your prices and how much
difference it can make to your life.
So far, we’ve covered a lot of ground. I’ve revealed the conundrum
marketing agency owners face, the thing every client hates about agencies
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Benjamin D. Simkin
- plus how to charge more. But at the same time, it’s all been fairly
philosophical.
It’s time to get into the nuts and bolts of it. Over the next few chapters
I’m going to reveal:




How to establish fees based on value
The 8 different ways to price your services
My 9 step sales process
And more
So buckle in, things are about to get serious. In this chapter, I’m going
to talk about value based fees, and most importantly, how you establish
them to get the best results for your clients.
When it comes to fees based on value, you need to understand a
couple of things. First of all - know this:
Value is totally and utterly relative. It is completely in the eye of the
beholder.
Mark Wahlberg starred in a movie called Lone Survivor. It’s based
on the true story of Marcus Luttrell and 3 Navy SEALs during the
Afghanistan war, carrying out the unsuccessful Operation Red Wings.
Wahlberg played Luttrell, the only survivor from the mission. The 4
SEALs are on a mission to capture Taliban leader Ahmad Shah in the
mountains of Afghanistan. To cut a long story short, they are totally
ambushed on the side of a mountain. They get completely blown to
pieces. The other 3 SEALs die in the attack. Luttrell is unable to walk and
ends up crawling through this mountain side, until he is found by local
villagers.
For some reason, the locals decide to look after Marcus. They bring
him to safety and hide him from the Taliban until the American forces are
able to rescue him.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Now - recently, Luttrell was featured on the Joe Rogan podcast. He
tells a story from when he was trapped on this hillside in Afghanistan.
After suffering nasty injuries, he couldn’t walk. He crawled to the top of
a ridgeline, trying to get a grip on where he was, and find a way to get to
safety.
After crawling for a day or two, Luttrell is so thirsty, he would do
literally anything for water. He drinks his own urine and blood, in an
attempt to quench his thirst. Eventually, he ends up falling into a river.
On the podcast, he describes the consumption of this water as one of
the greatest moments of his life. That’s how thirsty he was.
Now - let’s take a step back from the atrocities that happened here and
look at this objectively. Is the value of water to a man who can’t walk and
is crawling through the hills of a war torn country… different to the value
of water to a man living in a peaceful, inner city metropolis?
The answer is yes. Absolutely, and unequivocally. My point here is
not to say that you should start a business selling water in a war zone…
but it's merely to give a very intense example, that shows the different
values the same product has in different circumstances.
I talked about this in an earlier chapter, so I won’t make a big deal
about it here. But value is in the eye of the beholder. Value is relative to
the positive utility the customer will get from the product.
There is absolutely nothing unethical about charging different clients,
different prices for the same thing. If one client is going to make
$10,000,000 in their business from your leads, and another client will
only make $1,000,000 - due to the nature of what they sell - then I’m sure
you would agree:
Your business is providing different levels of value to your 2 clients.
And more importantly than this… the positive utility of your services will
be perceived very differently by each client.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
This is why I am a supporter of value based pricing. You don’t
determine value… the receiver does. In this case the receiver is a paying
client. They will determine freely, how much they are willing to pay.
I’m sure you get my point. Now, when it comes to establishing fees,
there are 3 things you need to get crystal clear on as a starting point.
1. The clients business goals
2. The metrics that determines success
3. The value of the goals to the client
Once you understand these 3 things, you are able to establish fees
based on the value you are providing to the client.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say you’re working with a client who runs an interior design
company. They design the interior of homes for home owners and the
average cost of their services is $5,000 to $20,000.
For this example, let’s say a client is worth $12,000.
1. They want to generate $1,200,000 in new revenue. That is the
business goal
2. They need 100 new clients to achieve this. This metric could
also be more granular - a certain number of leads as an
example.
3. The value to the client is more than just financial.
With regards to point 3, of course the value is $1.2M in revenue. But
you also have to take into the account the ancillary value the client
receives.
From working with your agency, it’s not just a monetary form of
value. They will be able to pay their staff, who in turn can look after their
family. They can spend the money on hiring & training more staff and
improving their culture. The business owner can also look after their own
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
family and the lifestyle they want to live.
It’s important that your client is aware of this. Value has many forms that
don’t necessarily have to be just money, but can work to improve their life
as a result. I will talk about this more when we reach the chapter on client
selection.
When you are about to sign a new client… you should always ask
yourself these questions:
What fee range would make your client say: “That was a great ROI, I
would work with that agency again”
And what would make you say:
“I was paid very well for the value I added”.
Every agency or marketer has worked with a client that was a total
pain. They suck all your time, ring / email you at all hours, expecting you
to be on call like you’re their personal slave. It’s the worst. This is just
another reason why you need to get paid more.
The Bar Fight Principle
At this point, I want to take a moment to recognise an important point.
It’s something I learned from a good friend of mine, James Farren. He calls
it: “The Bar Fight Principle''. And here’s why:
In a bar fight, the winner is the person who throws the first punch.
Because it doesn’t matter what happens after that, both people are getting
dragged out by security.
It’s the same with Price & Value. If you start talking to a client about
price before you’ve established the value you provide, you’re going to lose.
If price comes first, psychologically the client is looking at reasons why
you’re not worth it. Whereas if value comes first, the price is insignificant.
Resist talking fees and prices to the client until you’ve established value.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Otherwise you’re going to waste your time with the sales
conversation, and both of you will get dragged out anyway.
If they prematurely ask about price, simply tell them “I cannot possibly
answer that, since I don’t even know if I can help you yet, I need to know
more…” and then carry on with your questions to ascertain the client’s
needs.
Okay - so now you’ve established the 3 most important things as a
basis for value based fees, you need to get clear on your own unique
value.
To do so, you must answer these 3 questions:
1. Why me?
I cover parts of this in the chapter on the ideal sales process for
agencies. But for now, understand why these are important. If a buyer is
talking to hundreds of agencies then you need to understand why YOU
are important and valuable.





Do you have specific experience in their niche?
Have you generated results in that area with a specific campaign?
Did you write a book on marketing in this niche?
Have you been referred by a trusted source?
Or perhaps, are you just available to start right away?
Sometimes it is just as important to be lucky, as it is to have specific
knowledge. I know that may sound weird, but being the most flexible and
fastest moving can be a huge benefit when it comes to working with other
businesses.


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2. Why now?
Why is the client seeking to solve this problem now?
What has changed in their situation that means they need the
solution today?
Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire


What would happen if the business owner did nothing about this?
Has something occurred that has increased the urgency to get this
done?
If you can establish why it is important for the client to deal with this
right now, you will realise there is even more value in you providing the
solution. Especially if you can align why you are important with the
reason why they need it done now.



3. Why an agency?
Why are they looking to hire an external marketing agency /
consultant?
Why aren’t they doing this internally? (do they not have the skill,
the value, the resources)
Have they tried to do this at some point in the past and failed?
I’m sure you get the idea. But it’s important you can answer these 3
questions, because you will automatically realise how much value you
have to offer and why a business owner would be happy to pay you value
based fees once they see what you can offer.
Understand this: When a prospect contacts you, there is always an
implied urgency. The frame is totally different when they contact you, versus
you contacting them. You need to determine how great their urgency to get
a result is. The more urgent it is, the more they will be willing to pay the right
person.
Now that I’ve established the basics of setting high value fees - let's get
into the formula. It’s different for every client and every agency, but I’ve
tried to make this as formulaic as possible.
Step #1: Establish the value with the buyer. I addressed this earlier.
What they are looking for, and what the value of it is to them.
Step #2: Establish your own unique value.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Step #3: Given the value from step 1, estimate a significant ROI. If
the campaign will generate $1,200,000 in revenue, the investment for the
client can be anywhere from 10-25% of this value, providing them an
ROI of 4x to 10x. I generally charge 25% of the value provided, but you
can start lower if it makes you feel more comfortable.
Step #4: Decide on a price that you believe fairly represents the value
you provide, and the value the client will get. Ask yourself “Is this a good
deal for all parties involved?”. If you genuinely don’t believe so, then adjust
the price up or down until you feel comfortable with it, all while recognising
the immense value you provide.
Step #5: Relax. The hard work has been done. Here’s what you need
to realise: Business owners intuitively understand that it doesn’t make
sense to charge based on time, when marketing is a value added service.
Whether you submit a proposal or tell them this price over a call by
following my 9 step sales process, you’ll be surprised at how many deals
you will close. If they don’t understand this… you don’t want to work
with them anyway.
Now - when I explain this model to agency owners, I’m often met with
resistance. They don’t believe it can be this straightforward and simple. The
hardest sale in many cases is the one they need to make to themselves, to
convince them that this model of pricing is not only best for them, but it
actually benefits the client most as well, because they will value you and
what you provide to them more.
I could talk about value based pricing until the cows come home, but
I’m going to end this chapter here. If you take away nothing else from
this chapter, then it's important you understand this:
a) You must establish the value you are offering the buyer first
and foremost
b) You must understand the unique value you offer
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Without these 2 vitally important pieces of information, you will
never have the conviction to make a sale based on the value you provide
to your clients.
On that note, it’s time to discuss the 8 different ways you can price
your services.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Benjamin Simkin at the Gary Halbert Memorial Event in Las Vegas, the largest
copywriter event, that he underwrote, ran and hosted with Bond and Kevin Halbert
Benjamin's home while he resided in West Hollywood
Speaking in front of thousands in Brisbane, Australia
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Hiking through Los Angeles, one of Bond and Benjamin's
favourite past times
Speaking with Brian Kurtz at the Titans of Direct Response Event
Simkin, Rob Mosquera and Bond Halbert in West Hollywood
Speaking at Australia's Digital Marketer's Conference
Presiding on the Expert Panel at Jay Abraham's Consultant Mastery Event
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Benjamin's Brisbane Residence
Grabbing lunch at Tocaya, LA with Bond Halbert and Craig Clemens
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Chapter 8
The 8 Different Ways to Price Your
Marketing Services
So far, I’ve talked a lot about value.
Recognising the value that you offer your clients, and understanding
that the basis of fees are perceived value. Now, I want to get more
practical with you. It’s easy for me to say - “just charge more”. But when
it comes to actually doing it successfully and getting paid, it’s a little more
complex than that.
In this chapter, I want to talk about the 8 different ways you can price
your marketing services. This chapter could be a long one… so let's get
into it.
1. Value Reverse Engineering
This is the method I am most in favour of. It’s when you determine
the goal of the client, what they want, and you reverse engineer that goal
and base your fee on a percentage of the value you will create for them.
If their goal is to add $1M in revenue to their business in the next 12
months, I will typically charge around 25% of this figure to provide that
outcome for them.
That’s $25,000 per month.
When I first suggest this to agency owners, most are totally shocked.
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Benjamin D. Simkin
It’s normally 10x what they charge.
They almost always say, but Ben… do you guarantee it, what if you
don’t get results?
The truth is… you should only engage clients you know you can get
results for. If something doesn’t work initially, you find a way to make it
work.
If you're not going to achieve it then why are you running a marketing
agency?
What business do you have taking the client on in the first place?
I think you get my point.
1. PPL - Pay Per Lead Model
This one is pretty self explanatory. You get paid an agreed upon price,
Y, for every lead you generate for a client.
You generate the lead for X. Your profit is Y - X.
2. Contingency
Contingency deals are great fun. I learned this from my mentor Jay
Abraham.
This is where you structure a deal so you get paid a percentage of the
upside.
So in simple terms… I will go to a business owner and say: I will bring
in a million dollars a year in increased revenue / profit for you.
And I'll keep 25% and let you keep 75%. So I want to increase your
business by $1M / year and you don't have to pay me anything. Just give me
a % of the upside.
It’s a great model that can make you a lot of money, however not as
favourable as the methods that get you paid on day one.
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3. Licensing Deal
Let me explain this one with a story. Licensing deals work best when
your services create value for an industry, but the percentage you can
capture is only small, so you need a better way to monetise it. Mortgage
brokers are a great example.
I built a converting offer and funnel for Mortgage Brokers many years
ago that generated leads and sales for them. The issue was, I could make
far more money, and with much greater ease, if I licensed what I’d built
to many brokers, rather than getting a large amount from one broker.
So I licensed the system I had built to many businesses in the industry
for $1500 per month, and got them to run the ads for themselves.
All of a sudden I’d create a $100,000 per month income stream from
an industry I would have struggled to get $20,000 per month from,
without doing any extra work. That is the power of licensing deals.
4. Performance KPIs
This is where you get paid $X for every action you achieve. For
example:
I get my client 100 webinar registrations, they agree to pay me $X per
registration.
I market an event and if 100 people attend, I get paid $X for every
bum on a seat.
It's more about what KPI you use to measure success with.
Another way of structuring it might be to have the client pay for ad
spend, and they pay a smaller amount for every webinar registration.
You can be creative with this type of pricing model and have some
fun with it.
5. Equity
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Benjamin D. Simkin
Equity is where you negotiate with the client that if you achieve X%
of business growth, or a certain number of sales or clients acquired, then
you will receive a percentage of shares or equity in the business.
For example:
If I add a million dollars to your business, then I want 15% of your
company.
6. Underwriting
Underwriting is when you pay for everything and get a percentage of
the upside.
You pay for the ads, as well as the marketing work and the labour.
If it’s a live event you pay for the room and all associated costs… and
then you split the profits with the other parties involved.
This works best when there are other benefits that are either tangible
or intangible that come along with the deal.
For example, you underwrite an event with Kim Kardashian. Maybe
you want to pitch her audience, or you want the credibility of being on
stage alongside a big name.
You pay for all expenses, and then you get the expenses paid back to
you FIRST, and the profit is split between both of you.
So if the event costs $20k to put on… you get the $20k back and then
the rest of the profit is split.
The key to know is you are getting other tangible benefits out of the
relationship.
7. Hybrid
Finally, you’ve got the hybrid model. That’s when you combine 2 or
more of the above.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
So if you're doing a contingency deal - you could charge $4k / month,
plus ad spend, plus 20% of the deal.
Or if it's performance KPI - you could charge $5k / month + $100 for
every live event registration. That’s how the hybrid model works.
The hybrid model gives you the freedom to create the pricing model
that best reflects the value you are bringing to the specific situation.
Let me give you an example of a hybrid deal.
How I once got paid $1,700,000 to run Facebook Ads.
I did a hybrid deal with a guy that runs large scale live events in
Australia about social media where I was paid a monthly retainer plus
25% of back end sales. Knowing how to structure this deal is what made
all the difference.
But here's something you must know about this: what you’ll find with
most profit share deals is the client can underestimate the pain it causes
them to write that monthly cheque. They end up getting tired of paying
you, you become the highest expense on their profit and loss statement,
and even the accountant starts to ask if that's a line item they can get rid
of. It’s something worth noting, but at the same time, don’t let it scare
you from these deals - they are incredibly lucrative.
Key takeaways:
a) When it comes to getting paid - there are plenty of ways you
can do it
b) A hybrid payment model combines more than one of the 8
pricing models
c) Your only limits when it comes to ways to get paid is your
imagination
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Chapter 9
The Ultimate Sales Process to
Convert Any Client
s I’ve been saying for the past few chapters, it’s time to get into the
meat of things and show you more about exactly how the process
works. We’ve covered the new paradigm, why you need to charge more,
and the pricing models.
A
But what about converting those leads once you’ve figured out how
you are going to price.
How do you articulate value to them? How do you show them the best
why it’s in their best interests to pay you handsomely for your work?
That’s what I want to cover in this chapter.
Before I talk specifically about my sales process, I want to share a
story that totally changed the game for me. It blew the roof off what I
believed was possible, and once I saw it there was no looking back.
In my early 20’s, I had a mentor named Mark. He ran a successful,
multi million dollar company. One day, I was at his office when he had a
sales call booked with a client.
The crazy thing was, his office was literally just the garage in his
home. That taught me a lot about the fact that you didn’t need to have a
fancy office, with large overheads, in order to make a lot of money.
But anyway. On this particular day, Mark made a phone call to this
prospect, and I watched as he closed a $50,000 deal over the phone. He
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
never met this person, they didn’t even know him, but by following this
strict sales process he had created, he was able to articulate the value this
website would provide to his client, and sign them up.
It completely, and utterly blew my mind. I didn’t even know this
could be done until I saw it happen. Before I saw this, I always thought
you’d have to get a suit on and meet at the clients offices multiple times
to get large clients.
But here was Mark, closing “large” deals on a phone call sitting in his
garage! From that moment onwards I adopted the belief that I could to
and that was when I gained the confidence to close deals on the phone
and dramatically raise my prices.
I’m sure you’ve heard the story of Roger Bannister - the first man to
run a mile in under 4 minutes. Scientists predicted this could not be
physically done… until Roger did it. Within that year, 37 other people
did it too. That’s how powerful it was for me, when I saw Mark close this
deal. It changed the way I viewed sales and business forever.
Now, before I reveal the specifics of my sales process… I want to talk
about something incredibly important: Buyer indicators. Over my
business career, I’ve noticed many times how there are 4 specific “buyer
indicators” that are like a pre-flight check to your sales conversation.
By asking the right questions, you can get a clear gauge on where your
prospect is at, and how ready they are to purchase your services. Here’s
what they are and how they work:
The 4 Buyer Indicators
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Benjamin D. Simkin
1. Clarity - Does the client have specific clarity over what they’re
trying to achieve? Do they know what their goals are? How
many new clients do they want? How much extra revenue do
they want to generate? When they want to make it by?
2. Importance - How important to the client are these goals? Do
they have sales people standing around waiting for leads? Are
they struggling to pay their overheads right now because they
aren’t generating enough revenue? Determining the
importance will have a major impact on how much value the
client sees in your solution.
3. Why - This is the reason behind the reason, ask the client why
it’s important to them and why it’s important to them to
happen right now. Until you can uncover the hidden
motivation for why they want to speak with you… you’ll
always struggle to influence them and convert them into a
client.
4. Frustration - What level of frustration have they experienced
in the past to try to “solve” this problem or achieve this goal?
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Is there sufficient frustration, or do they still believe it’s
“easy” to achieve the goal you promise to deliver?
If your client lacks these indicators, it’s going to be less likely they’ll
do business with you. But conversely, if you can get clear on these 4
indicators, it’s going to be very easy to convert them.
Okay. Now that we’ve covered the buying indicators, let’s talk about
the 9 step sales process.
I created a course about this entire process. It’s the same process I
used to train my internal sales people, and the one I share with my clients
inside my Marketing Agency Accelerator.
Obviously describing this in a book is a little more complicated than
recording a video training on the topic, so I’ve just summarised it below.
Here goes - my 9 step sales process.
Step 1: Determine The Specific Client Goals
As I mentioned above, the first thing you need to do is get crystal clear
on the client’s goals. What are they trying to achieve? How many new
clients do they want? How much revenue do they want to generate?
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The clearer they are on this topic, the easier it will be to convert them
into a client, and the easier it will be to work with them.
Step 2: What Have They Tried Before?
Knowing what they’ve done in the past is critical. Have they tried the
same solution as you offer? Did they get results? Did they try other forms
of marketing? What worked and what didn’t? It’s vital to know these
things. Without knowing what they’ve done in the past, you will struggle
to steer them in the direction they need to go in.
Step 3: What Are They Doing Now?
Similar to the above. This is about digging deep to find out where they
are at and what they are doing right now to try and get the results they
desire. The faster you can understand this, the better position you will be
in when it comes to closing the deal.
Step 4: How Will They Deal With The Increase in Sales?
This step is important for 2 reasons. a) it insinuates that them
generating more business is merely a matter of ticking the boxes. That's
how good you are at getting results. b) it genuinely makes them aware
that they will need to be ready to handle an increase, so they have the
awareness to know that they need to actively work to be part of the
solution.
Step 5: Conceptual Statement
At this point, you’ve dug deep and got clear on what they want, what
they’ve done and how they will deal with the increase in sales that comes
from working with you and your agency. You now want to reiterate this
back to them so they understand you’re both on the same page. At this
part of the process, I often say something like: “So working with me your
goal is to generate $x goal, is that correct?”
This conceptual statement helps to bring everything into alignment,
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so you can move forward to the next part of the call.
Step 6: Share Corollaries relatable to your prospect
The call will be gaining serious momentum at this point, and you need
to be able to justify the results you are promising to the client. This is
when you start sharing stories of other clients you’ve worked with and
the results they have generated, to further build your case and prove that
not only have you got these results before for your client, but they are the
best option to go ahead with.
Step 7: How you will achieve the goal
No, it’s time to explain your process. You want to make sure that you
keep it high level and don’t delve into the detail too much. In a later
chapter, I explain why you should never hire salespeople that have
worked at marketing agencies, for this exact reason. You want to clearly
articulate what you are going to do and how you are going to achieve the
result, but you want to steer clear of what most marketers do, by not
talking about ROAS, CTR and a bunch of things your clients do not care
about.
Step 8: Investment
Reveal the investment your client must make to get these results.
Don’t call it the price or cost, because it’s an investment, and it’s
important your client sees it that way.
Step 9: Share what happens if you don’t get the result
As a final step, you want to share what happens if the client doesn’t
get the result.
That is my 9 step process. You may read this and assume it’s very
simple, but that’s because it is. Sales doesn’t need to be hard. It doesn’t
need to be a complicated process that has 3 or 4 calls involved. I’ve
literally used this process to generate millions of dollars in revenue.
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That’s how powerful it is.
What are the key points to take away from this chapter?
a) Don’t put limits on yourself. If you believe clients won’t pay
high fees - you will be right
b) Understand the 4 buyer indicators, so you can quickly
determine how close your prospect is to making a buying
decision on a call
c) My 9 step sales process is responsible for tens of millions in
sales. You need to master it.
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Chapter 10
Client Selection & the Biggest Lie
You’ve Been Told
n this chapter, I’m going to talk about client selection. I want to start
with a story about an agency owner that joined my accelerator. A few
years ago, Kim Barrett found himself struggling. As a social media and
marketing fanatic, Kim dreamed of owning a successful marketing
agency. However, working alone in the spare bedroom of his house with
only 1 paying client – this seemed like a far off dream.
I
Though Kim was getting his one client great results and growing their
business, when it came to getting more clients and growing his own
marketing business, he was stumped. He found himself with no strategy
and no support. That’s when Kim decided to join my Marketing Agency
Accelerator™.
Thanks to the training and support inside the Accelerator, within 10
weeks, Kim was able to land 5 more clients. Not only that, the skills and
confidence he gained from The Mastermind allowed him to charge these
new clients multiples more than what he was charging his first client.
“It allows you to learn so much faster. In addition to the training, you
get to see other member’s campaigns and what they are testing out. It’s
like learning from 5-10 days worth of work in a single day and that
increased skill gives you confidence when talking to prospects.”
In less than 2 years, Kim was able to build a multi-million dollar
agency.
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“It’s hard to believe that less than 2 years ago, I was working by
myself in the spare room of my house and really struggling. Now we have
great offices and great staff around us helping us grow exponentially.”
He has done marketing for world-renowned social media marketer,
Gary Vaynerchuck, as well as several ASX-Listed Companies. In one
single month, Kim was able to generate $620K in sales for his agency –
a far cry from his early days struggling to get past 1 client.
But despite his achievements, Kim has his sights set on growing his
agency even further and knows that the Marketing Agency Accelerator
will equip him with the strategies and support to continue to hit new goals.
Now, why am I telling you this?
Well, Kim was able to go from one client in his bedroom, to ASX
listed companies in a relatively short amount of time. Which leads me to
my next point:
So many agency owners believe that the success of your business is
all about the clients you have.
“If you want to get paid large fees, then you need to go after massive
corporate clients that will pay huge sums of cash”.
This is the biggest lie you’ve been told when it comes to running an
agency.
If you’ve read this far, and you now understand the concept of
charging based on the value you provide, I commend you.
A lot of agency owners I speak to are not even open minded enough
to contemplate the idea that there is a better way to run your business. A
way that you can generate more money, and provide an even better
service for your client.
Routinely though, when I explain this new paradigm, and new way of
running a business to other agency owners and members of my Marketing
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Agency Accelerator™… I get the same objection.
“Ben - I understand you charge based on value. I fully get that you
are paid large fees for the marketing services you provide. But I have a
problem. My clients won’t pay large fees. The only reason you can get
them to is because you work with large private companies.”
I mean, it’s a fair question right?
But here’s the thing. It’s totally false.
In the second chapter of this book, I mentioned the most important
thing you need to know, and the #1 thing clients hate about agencies.
The lack of results. The fee you charge is far less important to the
client, especially if you are providing a ton of value with great results that
generates them new business.
When it comes to getting high value clients, of course they need to be
able to pay you. They need to be of a reasonable size, so they can take on
clients and continue to grow.
But most people believe they need clients that are spending $200,000
per month on ads, so they can make 10% of that value and generate
$20,000 from the client.
Trust me when I say this is a false belief that isn’t serving you.
Let me articulate my point here with a true story.
A friend of mine ran an agency. They had a client they were charging
$2,000 per month to run ads for.
For whatever reason… the client wasn’t getting results, and was
looking for a new agency.
They came through one of our marketing channels, and I spoke with
this business owner.
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They told me they had worked with another agency and weren’t
getting results.
When I asked who it was, they mentioned it was my friend’s business.
I then explained to them how we worked, the results we could
generate for them, and that to get the results they wanted… it would cost
them $17,000 / month.
This was the exact same client. Same business. Same everything.
The client agreed and happily paid these fees, and stayed on with my
agency for 1 year.
$170,000 in fees. The other agency would have got $24,000 if they
kept them for a year.
Now - you may be wondering… well what did you say? How did you
do it?
Surely something must be different?
Nothing was different between what I did and my client did, other
than the fact that my agency prices based on the value we provide to a
client.
This is my whole point. Client selection is, for the most part, a total
myth. There’s a criteria for who I work with, which I’ll get to in a
moment, but when it comes to charging large fees and getting paid - the
clients you choose are the least important part of the process.
What matters is how you articulate the value that you provide for
them, and then the results you can get for them.
It’s not the fact that our price is higher so they think the quality is
better. It’s the way it’s presented.
I had no reputation when I did this. Even in the first 3 years of my
business. Hell the first 10 years. But you don’t need a high profile
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reputation. Of course that stuff helps… but it’s not what truly makes the
difference.
As I mentioned earlier. I’ve always viewed business and running an
agency differently.
I approach my life the same way I approach business. You get out of
life what you value out of yourself. You get out of life what you ultimately
believe you are worth.
It’s the same paradigm with everything. If you think you’re an
average person… you’ll end up in an average relationship with someone
who reflects that back to you and treats you that way.
If you recognise your value in a relationship… it will be a good
relationship.
You have a relationship with the clients in your agency, and it’s
exactly the same thing.
Don’t stay in toxic agency-client relationships just because you need
the money or you think it’s all you can get.
Most agency owners keep these clients because they’re afraid they
can’t do any better.
I think you get my point.
So - let’s talk about the fundamentals of choosing clients. It all starts
off as a mindset. When I speak with a potential client, here’s how I
approach it.
I ask myself this one question:
“Do I want to work with this client for the next 10 years?”
That's how I come into it. I always have the mindset that it's gonna be
a 10 year deal. The reason this is important is because it changes how you
talk to them. But you can also ask yourself the question:
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Is this client good for my business?
Is this going to be a 3 month client?
If so then it's not worth it. That's the first thing. Second thing is, if you
know that you're going to get 10 years worth of fees out of the client, then
you won't worry about overdelivering or putting in a lot of effort to get
the client in the first place.
You’ll do whatever it takes.
It's not an issue when you know there's $1M on the line over 10 years.
My second ever client paid me $20k to generate leads for them. After
I’d spent their $20,000 I still hadn’t generated any leads. Most people
would have given up at that point. But I knew if I could get the campaign
to work, I would have a client for 10 years. I ended up spending another
$20,000 of my own money, and then I got them the results they were after.
They stayed for many years after this, and referred me many more
clients which made me millions of dollars in agency fees.
Ok, so in saying that - what are the parameters around client
selection?
1. They need to have a long term need for leads / marketing
services
2. The client / campaign must be scalable. You can't get a client
and then after a month they’re booked out and can't take on
any more clients.
3. They need to be a client you will enjoy working with and be
able to manage the client relationship with ease
4. They need to be able to pay you
5. They should add ancillary value to you
It goes without saying that if someone makes $50k per year, or $200k
per year… they won’t be able to pay you $20,000 per month as a client.
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That is obvious.
You will need to target decent sized businesses, but as long as you
charge based upon the value your marketing services will be providing to
them, you can get paid well by the client.
And by ancillary value - what I really mean is the best clients will
offer you additional value beyond just money. There’s typically 6 types
of ancillary value:
1. Learning - will you learn more about your craft or the industry
your client is in by working with them? Maybe you will even
learn something outside of marketing that is valuable to you
2. Results - will you generate huge results that will be great for
your track record and for new opportunities
3. Relationship - will working with this client help you build
relationships with either them or other important stakeholders
that will help you achieve your goals and grow your business?
4. Credibility - does working with this client also give you
credibility in your industry? Are they a big name that will look
good on your resume and help you push the trajectory of your
business further forward?
5. Access to New Markets - does working with this client give
you access to new markets? New opportunities? Other
potential joint ventures that will increase your revenue and
profitability?
6. Goodwill - is there goodwill you will gain from being
associated with your clients business?
Being able to gain any of the above forms of ancillary value will help
you push your business forward even faster.
Now, let’s talk more about pricing:
When I was first starting out, agencies charged more than they
typically do now… as there was less of them. They would charge $6k /
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month to manage Adwords.
I was always charging more and doing things differently, by charging
based on value rather than per hour.One thing I’m often asked by agency
owners is:
“Ben, what if a client asks about other agencies that are cheaper?
What if they ask what guarantees come with the leads you provide?”
By dialling in my process over the past 16 years, I don’t get objections
like “other companies are cheaper”. Or “what are the guarantees”. Clients
want to work with marketing partners that can provide value. But if
someone were to ask me about another agency, and why they are
cheaper… it’s simple.
I would tell them to go with that company. Do it for a month. See
what results you get and see if paying cheaper fees works out for you.
This is a genuine comment, not a tongue in cheek line to handle a sales
objection.
I would just say to them… how about this. At the end of this month,
let's get together and go over your results and see if you need a better
solution.
If you're not getting the results you want then I will work with you.
Everyone is secretly begging to be led and told what to do. You need
to take it upon yourself and tell them.
Now, while we’re discussing client selection, let’s talk about niche.
You see it everywhere you go. Any sort of coach or guru that talks about
how to build an agency is obsessed with telling you to niche down and
just go after one industry. On the surface, this sounds like a good idea.
But let’s analyse this a little more closely.
An agency owner will typically do one of two things when it comes
to picking an industry they want to work with. Firstly, they will get wins
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for a client in one industry, and as a result decide they should solely focus
on this industry only and niche down.
The second thing agency owners do, which is much worse in my
opinion… is they pick a niche out of thin air.
They say “I’m going to work with mortgage brokers”.
The problem is, in 99% of instances, they don’t have any experience
working with that industry. So they don’t know all of the problems that
marketing agencies in that market face.
About 3 years ago, a client I was mentoring came to me asking about
a specific niche and whether or not I think it’s a good idea. I told this
client not to go into this niche. I knew some of the problems for agencies
and that it was a bad idea.
Yet 3 years later here we are. And he’s still working with that
industry, doing the exact same thing.
Agencies will lock themselves into a niche, have a bad experience or
get bad results, but continue to do it because “that’s their niche” and some
guru told them they need to focus on that specific industry. They keep
getting bad results and keep doing the same stupid thing. The reason it’s
a problem is because you’ve painted yourself into a corner.
What I’m an advocate of is what you call “Oil Vein Theory”. When
you get wins for a client in a particular industry… it's no different to
digging for oil and striking an oil field.
When an oil company finds an oil vein, they start extracting as much
oil as possible. They will then drill in more locations near that specific oil
vein, because it’s highly probable they will find more oil in the same
vicinity.
This is what you should do as an agency owner. Instead of niching
into an industry, you should niche into opportunities. Get wins for a client
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and then look for more opportunities in that industry. Drill near that same
“vein”. But don’t restrict yourself by staying in only one industry.
If an opportunity comes up in a different field, then you can go after
that. But It's bad to be niche specific in my opinion.
Find more business like the ones you got results for… but do so
because it’s a good opportunity. Not because you only focus on one niche.
Again - I think you get my point here.
Let’s finish this section by recapping the key takeaways:
a) The biggest lie you’ve been told is that client selection is the
most important part of being able to charge higher fees
b) You don’t need to spend $200,000 per month on ads to
generate $20,000 per client
c) Ask yourself if you want to work with a client for 10 years
before taking them on
d) There are 5 key parameters to selecting a client, and 6 types
of ancillary value you can get as a result
e) Don’t niche into an industry. Niche into opportunity
Let’s keep moving!
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Chapter 11
The Perfect Day & The Measure of The
Successful Agency Owner
I want to talk about a less sexy topic… but equally as important.
Here’s a question:
What does your perfect day look like?
If you’re not living your perfect day, every single day, then you are
not living your perfect life.
Which brings about another question:
Are you living your perfect life right now?
If you’re reading this book, I would probably assume not. And that is
totally fine. The reality is that how we want our lives to be is constantly
changing every single day. What your perfect day looked like 10 years
ago… is probably very different to what it will look like 10 years from
now.
I’m not going to talk about this topic too much, it’s more something I
want you to think about. And the reason this is a significant topic for
agency owners to consider is…
In my opinion, this is the real measure of success in your agency.
Not how much you work… but how you feel about the amount of time
you spend working. Let’s be real. Most agencies work way too much.
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There’s nothing wrong with working a lot if you love it, and you choose
to do it because you find it inspiring.
That’s fair game.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. For most agency owners, they
work too much, stress too much, have unhappy clients and spend all their
time putting out fires.
If you've got 50 clients you have to try and keep happy at all times,
that’s a hell of a burden to bear.
It’s the fastest path to more stress, high cholesterol, weight gain, lower
testosterone and bad relationships… just to name a few.
If you’re reading this right now… the unfortunate reality is you’re
probably experiencing a few of those.
How much you work is not the discerning fact. It’s how you feel when
you do. Is your work enjoyable at all times?
If you work 40 hours or 80 hours a week and you enjoy it, that's okay,
but what percentage are you stressed out?
Burnt out?
Tired and stressed?
As I said before. The key to perfect life is living your perfect day
every single day.
When you get up every morning, ask yourself this: Are you living the
lifestyle you really want to live?
One of the big things I want to do… is get up at 10am every morning
to start work. This year I’m working harder. Writing books, building the
mastermind. Getting everything done because I want to get this off the
ground. But as I said before - I’m choosing to do it because it's enjoyable
to me and it’s what I want to do.
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So ask yourself the question, really do the work.
Do you want to be able to go to your son's soccer game?
Do you want to be able to travel? Take 2 weeks off every quarter?
Remember this: If you’re not living the perfect day, you're not living
the perfect life. Because of this paradigm. If you're in your agency
working like a dog, you're working towards "oh in the future i'm going to
be able to do XYZ".
You don't realise that this is your life right now. It’s happening today
in front of your eyes.
Your perfect day is your perfect life.
I want to articulate the importance of having a business you love
through the following story of 2 of my Accelerator members - Daniel &
Lisa Baxter. When I first met them, they ran a national online-based real
estate agency. Funnily enough, they were sick of marketing agencies, and
joined my group to learn more about marketing for their own business.
Over time, they grew their business and started getting such good
results that other people in the property industry asked them for help with
marketing.
Daniel & Lisa started helping out other businesses, and one thing led
to another and they decided to transition into their own agency. I taught
them how to structure their agency, identify profitable opportunities they
could capitalise on and how to charge high prices. They decided to focus
their initial efforts on the property space so they could leverage existing
relationships.
After being a member of my group for a few years, they’d been listening
to me talk about the need to be profit-focused and charge adequately for the
value you offer. So right out of the gate they did the same thing. They kept
clear of the normal management fee structure and charged per lead to get the
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maximum amount of money possible for the value they provided.
Today, Daniel & Lisa have clients in most states of Australia getting
amazing results. In Daniel’s own words, he said:
“Without Ben, we probably would have charged a maximum of $99
per lead (as I honestly didn't think people would pay more than that - just
a limitation we'd put on ourselves) now the minimum we generally charge
is between $230-$315 per lead and have clients willing to pay this
because of the quality of the lead and the relationships we've built.
In all honesty without both Ben and the accelerator, we'd likely have
an average to shitty property business that we hated owning and running.
It truly changed our trajectory and has allowed us to build a successful
and profitable marketing agency with great clients, and best of all, a
business we actually love doing and not many people can say that.”
Aside from just increasing their pricing and getting clear on their
model, Daniel & Lisa were able to create a business they love. I spoke to
them recently and they told me they had just crossed the $100,000 per
month milestone, which is a great achievement.
Money is one thing, but loving what you do and living the perfect day
is a whole different ball game. Hats off to them.
Takeaways from this chapter:
a) If you’re not living the perfect day you’re not living the
perfect life
b) Get clear on what you really want. Your life is happening
every day now in front of your eyes
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Chapter 12
The Secrets to Hiring an Incredible
Team
Hiring a team. Let’s talk about it.
This is a topic that almost deserves its own book. That’s how long I
could talk about it for. For some reason, it’s something a lot of agency
owners fear, and try to avoid. And it’s this exact thing that keeps them
stuck. Hovering around the 6 figure mark, trapped by clients, unable to
provide them truly outstanding services. Just like my friend Barry I talked
about at the start of the book.
So… when it comes to hiring a team to help you serve your clients
and grow your business, what's the best way to approach it?
Here’s what you need to do first: You need to audit what you spend
your time on. You’ll find that you spend 20% of your time creating
reports for clients or doing something that's a total waste of time.
You need to ruthlessly audit how you spend your time and identify
what you can stop doing. I learned the importance of this from one of my
early mentors, Dan. He taught me the value of having no interruptions.
When he became a client of BusinessNET, his business was doing
$30M per year and he didn’t even have a mobile phone. When I turned
up to meetings with him, even if I was 5 minutes early he’d make me wait
outside on the street before letting me into his office. He also made it
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mandatory that all emails get replied to within 12 hours so we can keep
momentum. He explained that imagine if he sent an email, and I replied
24 hours later, then he replied to mine 24 hours later, we’d never get
anything done.
Since then I’ve adopted this quick reply method for all my clients and
staff and get more done in a week than most get done in a month. I also
apply this to projects, compressing the timeframe they get done, meaning
I get more done, and as a result make more money.
Here’s another story to further articulate this point.
A few years ago, I had a client I was mentoring work from my office
for a while, and it was truly amazing to observe what he spent his time
doing. He would do 90 minute client calls that could have been done in
10 minutes. He would spend so much time talking about the weather and
the clients dog, and a ton of random topics that didn’t add any actual value
to working with the client.
When I asked him about it one day he said “I’m building the
relationship with my client”.
Now - if that's how he chooses to run his business and spend his time,
fair play to him. But it’s a total waste of productive time, if you want to
grow your agency and really build something big. You build the client
relationship by getting great results for them. Everything else is a waste
of time.
So… step one is to identify what you need to stop doing completely.
Once you’ve done that… STOP DOING THESE THINGS.
This will take discipline at first, but it's absolutely critical if you want
to grow your agency.
Now that you’re clear on what tasks need to go, delegate the simple
ones first. You will find you’re doing a ton of tasks that can be outsourced
to an assistant for not much money.
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One of my former clients Siimon Reynolds, who grew his own
marketing agency Photon Group to 6,000 staff in just 8 years, said to me
once: “Ben, if you don’t have an assistant, you are one.”.
I’ve never forgotten this lesson. The fact remains that it's far easier to
hire an assistant than it is to hire a rocket scientist. And that’s why you
want to outsource all of your non-genius tasks first.
You will free up 10-20 hours a week just from doing this alone, and
it won’t even cost you that much. From there, you work out based on
reverse engineering, what you need to do to afford the team you want to
hire.
If your goal is to get 100 clients and grow a big agency… then maybe
you need to get 2 new clients to be able to afford a Facebook Ad manager.
And getting a good copywriter may cost you 5 clients, for example.
Hiring Good Ad Managers
There’s a lot of talk in the agency world about how to hire a good ad
manager, where to find them, and how to get someone that is decent without
breaking the bank. Here’s what I’ve learned to do: Whenever I hire an ad
manager, I hire a copywriter and I teach the copywriter Facebook ads
because the reverse doesn't work.
It’s significantly more difficult to teach a Facebook ad manager how
to write copy, than teaching a copywriter how to use the FB ad platform.
That’s because the skill gap is large. Running Facebook ads is specific to
the platform, but copywriting is a universal skill of advertising, so the
skill gap is smaller for them.
Once you have your basic marketing team assembled, you will
eventually want to hire a general manager to run the company and hire
everyone. That general manager should be good at sales as well because
the manager doesn't need to do 40 hours of management per week. That
way, when they aren’t doing management, you can get them on the phone
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selling clients.
Hiring Sales People
This is another area of running an agency that most agency owners
get wrong. There’s an entire chapter in this book about how to create an
effective sales process, but let's spend a minute here and talk about hiring
sales people for that process.
The biggest mistake agency owners make is hiring salespeople from
the marketing / agency world. You should never do it. This may sound
counterintuitive at first, but you want to hire people that have been good
at sales in other industries. That way, you can teach them your way of
doing sales and not the marketing agency way of selling.
Most agencies, if they even have a sales process, have one that is
totally broken. They talk about all the details of a campaign, ROAS,
clicks, funnels etc. But none of that matters. They bring the old habits and
the broken model into your business.
I saw the same thing happen in my IT business. You can’t talk to a
CEO about the RAM of their computer and why it’s a problem. They
don’t know what you mean if you say that their computer is 1200MHz
but it needs to be 1800 MHz. If you talk like that to them they end up
confused and you won’t make a sale.
I recognised this early and was good at explaining this to a CEO in
their terms. I would say - your computers currently have an issue and
that's costing you $2k - $5k a year in lost down time. Across your 50
employees that's $100k - $250k. You need to replace all of your
computers… as an example.
When you're talking to a prospect about becoming a marketing
agency client. They are just people. They don't care about CPC and ROAS
and all that jazz.
You talk to the client in their frame of reference. And a non technical,
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non marketing sales person can do that much better. Because the stuff
they need to learn to be good at selling marketing is very small. But trying
to teach a marketing sales person how to do things your way doesn't work
because they need to unlearn everything they know.
It’s a headache, and one that will cost you far more time and money
than it will make you. Don’t make this mistake. If you choose to ignore
this advice… don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Here are the key takeaways from this chapter:
a) Audit your time and ruthlessly remove the things that are not
getting you closer to your goal
b) Outsource the simple, non-genius tasks first. It’s easier to hire
an assistant than a rocket scientist
c) Good copywriters make good ad buyers. Marketing sales
people make bad sales people
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Chapter 13
How to Make $1,000,000 from 5
Clients in 90 Days or less
I
n terms of making $1M from your agency, you should have a much
clearer idea now of what's required. As I’ve mentioned many times
over in this book, it comes down to capturing part of the value you provide
to your clients. This requires you to go after the clients you know you can
provide value for, improve your mindset and believe in what you know
you’re worth.
In this chapter, the final chapter of the book, I’m going to reveal my
6 step process to make $1,000,000 from only 5 clients in the next 90 days.
The truth is - it will take some people longer than 90 days, and that is
completely fine. But there’s a lot of people who will be able to achieve
this in the next 3 months, if you take action and get after it.
So - let’s get into it.
The 6 steps to make $1,000,000 in your agency from 5 clients.
Step 1: Establish the 3 clients you’ve got the best results for.
Within your agency already, there are clients you’ve produced
tremendous results for. If you’re like most agency owners, you’ve
probably made them far more money than you’ve charged for. You’ve
provided them a ton of value, and they’ve got great results. Fantastic.
I want you to make a list of the 3 clients you’ve got the best results
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for, as they are going to form the basis of who you go after, in your efforts
to build up your agency.
Step 2: Calculate the value you created for them.
There's no surprise here - but we all know that doing marketing for a
business is one of the most important tasks when it comes to getting sales
and growing revenue, it’s that simple.
So it’s time to calculate the financial value you’ve added to your 3
best clients, so you know not only where you stand, but exactly what you
can produce for another client.
For example - if your client has a coaching program they sell for $10,000,
and you generate them 10 new clients per month - that’s $100,000 in value
in value created for them every single month. Determine the amount of new
business you generated for each client for the entire time you worked with
them. It’s important to know this.
Step 3: Make a list of potential clients in the same industries
It’s not rocket science, but the best place to start to get new clients is
in the industries you’ve already got great results for. By knowing your 3
best clients, and the value you generated for them, you will be in a very
solid position to get more clients.
I would start by focusing on just one industry. Do your research and
find companies in this industry that are already established, have a decent
footprint, and fit the criteria I shared in Chapter 10 on client selection.
Now it’s time to generate some leads.
Step 4: The 3 best ways to generate agency leads
Realistically, there’s only a handful of ways to generate leads, that’s
the reality. Here are the 3 best:
1. Run ads on Facebook targeting the industry you’ve chosen,
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with an ad that reveals the results you’ve already generated for
other people in this space
2. Cold email the companies that fit your criteria and say the
exact same thing:
“Hey <name>, In the past <time frame>, I’ve helped <similar client>
in <location> generate <result>. Do you have the capacity to take on more
clients?”
It really is that simple.
3. Organic content. The same old school hustle. Create content
that helps your clients overcome their problems and reveals
the results and value you can generate for them. Add your
ideal clients on Facebook and Linkedin so they see the value
you are providing.
Step 5: The 9 Step Sales Process
Once you’ve generated the leads, it’s time to convert them. There’s
not much more to say here, other than to follow the exact sales process I
outlined in Chapter 9.
Step 6: Just do it
But more so than just following Nike’s timeless advice, you need to
model what works. I know it’s cliche and corny and has been said 1,000
times, but it really is that important.
I want to articulate this point with some advice I was given by a
successful business millionaire.
In fact, it was the best piece of business advice I was ever given. I
wish I had taken it 22 years ago when I first got into business.
"You can either model something that works, or spend years
struggling"
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
I was told this by an incredible business owner 16 years ago. He had
something like 50-60 employees working for him...
He was worth millions. Many millions.
Yet despite knowing how rich this guy was I never really put much
thought into what he said. But after 22 years of working my butt off, I
really wish I did. Essentially, you can either go out on your own, use trial
and error and test HUNDREDS of different methods all whilst you stress
and worry about your income...
...OR you can model a system that already works, use the same
strategies that are responsible for millions of dollars and create huge
amounts of wealth and freedom for yourself...
Here’s the truth:
I've spent 16 years building our agency's marketing, our sales
systems, our products and services and know how to make it all work.
And that’s why I want to invite you to apply for my Marketing Agency
Accelerator™ Program. So you can partner with my team and I and build
your own agency out, exactly as I’ve described in this book.
If you’re interested and want more information,
https://www.agencygrowthaccelerator.com/ and book a call.
go
to
Building an agency to $1,000,000 with 5 clients isn’t easy, but it is
simple. It’s a skill set.
And once you have the skills required, you can build a profitable
business that runs without you and generates you vast amounts of wealth
and freedom.
To do this, you need to master:


My 9 step sales process to convert anyone.
The simple strategies to generate leads that are hungry for your
services and happy to pay you large fees for the privilege of
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Benjamin D. Simkin



working with you
How to hire the right team at the right time who can help build
your business for you
The right systems and processes that are specific to marketing
agencies so you can scale without the headaches most businesses
have
Plus tons more
On top of that, we all know how much easier it is to succeed when
you have a supportive community of people around you. Plus the
assurance and guidance of someone who has already done it.
Look, the truth is this book is a bible. Take everything inside, read it
3-5 times, and you will be able to build your agency out. That's how good
the information is here.
But here’s what I also know. There’s a good chance that less than 5%
of people who bought the book even made it this far. If you’re reading
this, congratulations, you followed through.
But even of the ones who have read it. I know how hard it is to commit
to changes and actually run your business differently.
So why waste your time trying to figure out the intricate details
yourself? I created my Marketing Agency Accelerator to help people
grow their agencies fast.
I think you get my point. I want you to go to https://
www.agencygrowthaccelerator.com/ now and if you feel like it’s right for
you and where you are at in your journey, apply now and let’s talk.
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Confessions of a Marketing Agency Millionaire
Conclusion
I
wanted to write this book to help as many agency owners as possible.
There’s so many people out there pretending they know what it takes
to build a successful agency, when they’ve never even done it. Of the
books and literature out there that are legitimate, most miss the mark
about the best possible way to run a digital agency. This book is the
compilation of my knowledge, experience and insights over the past 16
years, that every agency owner would benefit from knowing. I’ve poured
my heart and soul into this book, but it’s of no value to you if you don’t
apply any of it.
My hope is that you will go out and apply even some of this information
and see the results for yourself. If you do want to reach out to get further
customised help, the offer is there. I’d love to have you involved in my
Marketing Agency Accelerator™ if it turns out you are a good fit. If you
decide this is not for you at the moment, that is totally fine too.
I’ll leave my links below if you do want to reach out. But regardless
- make sure you apply what you’ve learned from this book. Your clients
are depending on you, your family need you to be a success… and given
the state of the world in 2021, we need more successful people across the
planet.
I hope you enjoyed this book. Ben Simkin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ben.simkin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benjaminsimkin/
Marketing Agency Accelerator: https://www.agencygrowthaccelerator.com/
BusinessNET: https://businessnet.com.au/
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