In this episode, Chip and Gini address a listener’s question about the opportunities for growing an agency through outbound sales. They discuss the challenges of outbound sales, particularly in a small agency environment, and highlight the importance of building relationships and a strong brand.

Both suggest that agency owners focus on networking and proactive relationship-building rather than traditional cold calling. They emphasize a multi-faceted approach to business development that includes content marketing, warm introductions, and maintaining an active online presence.

Ultimately, they advocate for a shift in mindset from outbound sales to relationship cultivation to achieve sustainable agency growth.

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, today we have a question from a listener that we thought we would answer.

Gini Dietrich: Woohoo listener questions. I love it.

Chip Griffin: We like it when people listen to us and we like it when people ask us questions, so

Gini Dietrich: that is true.

Chip Griffin: We’ll cater to that today.

Gini Dietrich: Shall I read said question?

Chip Griffin: You shall read, said question.

Gini Dietrich: Maybe I’ve just missed it when you’re covering this in your podcast, but what opportunity do you see for growing an agency through outbound sales? When I’ve listened to your podcast, I get the impression that you’re more in line of thinking that in the agency world, it’s more about becoming known and then they will contact you when they have a need.

It’s super good question.

Chip Griffin: First of all, I appreciate the very dramatic reading of that question. Welcome that you just gave us.

Gini Dietrich: You’re welcome. Thank you. I practiced.

Chip Griffin: You practiced.

Gini Dietrich: Practiced. I did.

Chip Griffin: In your head, because we just saw that question a short time ago.

Gini Dietrich: I read it out loud once before this.

Chip Griffin: You did, you read it out loud one time and I said that sounds like a good question to address and so we shall. So outbound sales, what do we think about that, Gini?

Gini Dietrich: Well, I will say. In my experience, it is challenging to do that. I’ve hired, and maybe, maybe we should separate this into two pieces, which is hiring people to do outbound sales for your agency versus you. And then whether or not it works. But I’ll say it, it is challenging and I have found that it’s…

That you have to be top of mind and you have to build a brand, and you have to build relationships, and you have to network so that when there is a need, they come to you first, right? Because not everybody’s going to have a need. All the time, every month or every week to hire an agency. So I have found that inbound marketing and you know, all of the things that you’re doing to build your brand and network and, and be top of mind are the things that work the best.

That’s not to say outbound sales doesn’t help with that, but it is more challenging I think for what we do for a living than just, you know, other businesses that can hire sales teams that just make cold calls.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and I, I think that that part of this, as you suggest, does come down to, to how we’re defining what outbound sales is, because there’s what outbound sales is, there’s who is doing it.

I, I think the, the either outsourced outbound sales or the hired outbound salesperson. I, I really haven’t ever seen that work in a small agency environment. It’s sort of the dream that you can just go hire somebody and they’ll, you know, they’ll, they’ll bring people in and you’ll just, as the owner, you’ll close them.

But I, I, I cannot think of a single situation that I’ve seen that work in for a small agency. I’m sure it has. So, I’m, I’m, and I’m sure that, that some listener is gonna say, well, it worked for me. Great. It, there are certainly those cases, but it is, it is uncommon that you can have someone else who’s doing your sales and it is all outbound and it actually has results.

So let’s, let’s dismiss that piece of it. But you as the owner, I think there is a role for outbound sales, depending on how you describe it.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: And, and to me it’s less about outbound sales and it’s more about outbound building of new relationships. Mm-hmm. And I think that there is absolutely a case to be made for you to be proactively trying to generate relationships.

With new people as opposed to just waiting for them to come to you based off of the content that you’re putting out on social or your blog or your email or that kind of thing. But to me it’s, it’s not, I don’t think of that necessarily as sales in the purest sense, because to me, I think when you talk about outbound sales, that really is trying to go to someone and try to, to generate the need for a conversation around sales. And that shouldn’t be what it is because that is rarely to your point, the case because timing isn’t right many of the times.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Yeah, I think, I think you’re right. I think it depends. Like if you told me I had to sit down and make cold calls to our target audience, it, it would just never happen.

I would never do that. That’s considered outbound sales. Like I have a niece. Sure. That’s what she does. She works for an agency. A large, large agency and they have in-house sales reps that call. Constantly. That’s what they do. That’s what she does, and she’s fairly successful at it. But that is not, never, never anything that I would do myself, right?

Just because I’m not comfortable with it and it’s never the structure that I would place inside my agency. So that is what I would consider outbound sales. I don’t consider networking and building relationships and ensuring that we are top of mind when they’re ready to make a decision or when they’re ready to hire outbound sales, even though, I guess technically it is. I would consider that more networking and relationship building, right?

So I think you’re right that you have to define what that means, but all of those things have to happen. And when you run a small agency, you are the salesperson. Yes. Whether or not you have somebody helping you, you are, you are the salesperson, and my CFO says this to me all the time. He’s like, your job, you have two things to do.

Build the brand. Direct the revenue. Build the brand, direct the revenue, build the brand, direct the revenue. And I’m always like, so anytime I go to do something, he’s like, is that building the brand or directing revenue? And if it’s neither of those two things, I have to delegate it.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I mean that’s a, that is a reasonable viewpoint to have.

Mm-hmm. And I think that… I mean, look, I think cold calling is for, even for large agencies, I wouldn’t generally encourage it, but I suppose at some point you’re large enough that you can just throw dollars at it and it doesn’t even matter. Right. And you know, you’ve got enough of a brand reputation to begin with that, you know, perhaps that will shake some things loose. But you know, anytime you’re doing outbound, I would always prefer it to be more targeted than traditional cold calling.

You know, not just getting a list out of some list broker and just working from top to bottom. Instead, you, you wanna reach out with personalized outreach to folks and, and leverage that. And I think if you’re doing that kind of outbound and it’s, and it’s designed to build new relationships either for people who can refer a business to you or who might become a client at some point.

I think that’s a, a useful portion of your business development mix. I don’t think it should simply be throw content out there and wait for the phone to ring, because that can work. But, you know, doing more to fuel it yourself is beneficial. I, it, to me, that’s just not, that is not classic outbound sales in the way that most people would think of it.

And if you went and hired someone to do outbound sales for you, they would likely be thinking of it.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Yeah, I think it’s, if you can be thinking about how do I build relationships. How do I get introductions, warm introductions to people that I want to meet? How do I nurture those leads through content and through speaking engagements and webinars and things like that?

And how do I stay top of mind? That’s from an agency perspective, I think those are the right things to focus on.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, and to the extent you’re doing any kind of outbound, whether it’s outbound sales, outbound networking, whatever you wanna call it, it is helpful to have a visible online footprint to refer back to.

Gini Dietrich: Yes it is mm-hmm.

Chip Griffin: So that when someone googles you to look you up or clicks a link, they, they not only see who you are and understand a bit about your background, but they also understand your perspectives. And I think far too often we, we don’t do enough as agency leaders, generally speaking, to share our viewpoints using the various platforms that we have.

That’s a huge missed opportunity because that is how you set yourself apart from others. That is how you demonstrate your expertise before you even have the first meaningful conversation with a prospect and, and they start to get to know you that way.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. I think, yes. I mean, it is wonderful when somebody calls and says. We, you know, we’ve been reading your blog or we’ve, we found your article, or we follow your LinkedIn newsletter, or whatever it happens to be. It’s wonderful when those things happen, but you can’t predict it. And I think that’s the hardest thing about growing an agency is that you can’t predict growth if you’re solely reliant on referrals.

So you have to be more proactive about it so that you can say, okay, like we, we set very aggressive goals every year and usually it’s a revenue number, but it’s also a number of new clients. And then we kind of, we break that down, right? So I know exactly who I need to be talking to, who I need warm introductions to, what kinds of meetings I need to be having, what kinds of content I should be sending or creating to stay top of mind with those people.

And that’s how you begin to predict your growth a little bit versus just waiting for the phone to ring, which I’ll admit was the way I grew my agency in the beginning. Right? And it was very slow growth. Like that’s, we would wait and sometimes some years were great because the phone rang many times and some years were terrible because the phone didn’t ring at all.

And that’s a really hard way to grow an agency. So you have to be proactive in reaching out and getting in front of your target audiences.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and even with those things, it is often very difficult to predict your growth as a small agency, right? Yeah. Yes, yes. I mean, because as a small agency, you know, a deal here, a deal there makes a giant difference in what your year looks like.

Yep. And so, and, and you just simply, you’re not doing enough volume that you can absorb that, you know, one or two deal difference. That’s, that’s even if you’re run, executing everything absolutely properly and, and doing all the outreach and tracking your pipeline and staying in touch with people and all of that.

So the more that you do, the more likely you are to be able to obtain those goals that you’re trying to, to achieve. And so you need to be thinking about. What is the mix of things that will help get you there? And I think that’s, that’s ultimately the message. The takeaway that I would encourage people to have is don’t rely on any one tactic.

Don’t rely just on outbound. Don’t rely just on content. Don’t rely just on referrals. It’s having that mix of things that will tend to stabilize those peaks and valleys that we’re all so familiar with in the small agency world.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I think you also need to include things. I’ve, I’ve mentioned this a couple of times, but warm introductions.

Mm-hmm. So look at people that you want to meet and then who you know in common, and I mean, my team and I do this every week. We go through and we say, okay, who do we know in common? And then we split it up just to ask them for introductions. Sometimes it works, sometimes people are like, ah, I didn’t really, I don’t really know that person.

I’m just connected with them on LinkedIn, which is fine, right? But if you, if they know them well enough. And you have a good enough relationship with the person you’re asking, they’re almost always going to make a warm introduction for you. And it’s just, you know, having a 15 minute conversation just to understand what their pain points are, if they have an agency, whether or not they’re happy, like those kinds of things will help you determine how you’re going to nurture those leads until they’re ready to make a decision.

And those are the kinds of things you should be focusing on. And I guess that could be considered outbound sales.

Chip Griffin: Sure, but I, but I think that, that taking away the pressure of trying to make the sale in that conversation or, or even

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, yeah.

Chip Griffin: You know, open the deal conversation, if you will. I, I think taking that pressure away helps you, it helps them and, and if you’re going about things saying, Hey, this is just someone I want to get to know.

It might turn into business directly or indirectly. But either way, it’s someone that I’m, I’m interested in getting to know more, getting their perspective. It can be good market intelligence, just having these conversations. Yep. And so if, if you go into it that way, you’re more likely to meet success than if you’re sitting there saying, oh, this was a failure.

Because they’re not looking for an agency right now. They’re happy with their current agency or they just don’t use agencies or whatever. That’s, you know, you still can get a lot of value out of that discussion, short of them immediately going into your proper pipeline.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. And I would, when you have those quick introductory meetings, listen for things that you can use later. So I had a call last week that I’m really excited about. It’s probably not gonna come to fruition until quarter two of next year. But during that conversation, she told me three or four things, pain points that they have, where I’m like, okay, that’s good to know.

So now I have that in my CRM and every few weeks she’s gonna get an article from me, a book from me, a podcast to listen to, you know, things like that. Just, you know, hey, thinking about you, I know this was a, this was a challenge for you. Here’s how somebody solved it. Like that kind of stuff. It works incredibly well.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and I think you hit the nail on the head there by, you know, talking about getting information, asking questions. We say this all the time, but don’t go into these trying to sell yourself. No, don’t go into it trying to talk as much about all the great stuff you do and all the great ideas you have.

You want to go into these conversations, particularly with someone who doesn’t know you particularly well and, and they haven’t even come to you looking for your service. Ask them questions. You can show that you’re smart by asking questions. You don’t have to do it by talking every about what your actual expertise is.

Yes, and the more that you ask questions and the more information that you gather, the more likely you are to be able to walk away from that with value, regardless of whether or not they turn into a potential deal.

Gini Dietrich: I always laugh when I go to a meeting like that and all I do is ask questions, and at the end or later they say, gosh, that meeting was so good.

It was so productive. You’re so smart. And I, and I laugh because literally all I did was ask questions. That’s all I did. But when you ask questions, you get them thinking about things they may not have been thinking about or different solutions that they may not have considered, and now they think you’re really smart. Because you’ve brought that to the forefront of their minds.

So you should absolutely spend the time in those introductory meetings just asking questions because they will think you’re far smarter that way than if you pontificate or talk about all the great things that you’re doing and bore the crap out of them.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And, and, I mean, I, what I love hearing is, you know, I, I had never really thought of it that way before.

Let me think before I give you an answer. Yep, yep. Right. Because, because that, that truly does mean that you’ve caused them to think about things in a different way. And, and that is the strongest way to make an impression on somebody. Because if, if you go in and you ask the same seven questions that every other agency asks, every other sales person asks, that doesn’t really, you know, the silly questions like, well, what, how much would it be worth to you if I was able to improve your email open rate by 10%?

Who cares?

Gini Dietrich: Not worth anything!

Chip Griffin: Who cares?

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: I mean, I just, that, that kind of, those kinds of questions just drive me bonkers. And so if it’s a, if it’s a question that comes from your actual curiosity,

Gini Dietrich: yes.

Chip Griffin: Those are good ones. Yes. If it’s a question that comes from some list that you got from chat GPT or some sales advisor or anything like that, chuck it.

Get rid of it. Yes, yes. Use your own curiosity. Yes. Leverage what you want to know, because that makes for a more natural conversation, but it also tends to show the expertise that you actually have.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, and one of the things I like to do is, you know. They’ll say something like, oh gosh. One of the, one of the challenges we have is that, lemme think of something real quick.

Um, I’m on the comms team and our marketing team handles shared and paid. And so I really believe in the PESO model, but I don’t have, I only control earned and owned. And. So I’ll ask a bunch of questions that lead them to the idea that they could actually work with their marketing brethren then not work in their silos, right?

But they come to that conclusion on their own, right? And then I’ll say, you know, when we, when we worked with a client on that kind of problem, here’s some things that we considered. And then they go, oh, and they start to see themselves working with you in just by the way you’ve presented that. Yes. So it’s a different way of approaching it, but it works incredibly well.

Chip Griffin: Yeah, I mean if you, if you treat people like you would treat a client. And generally speaking, for the most part, I don’t think most of us are just sitting there yapping at our clients, you know, for the full 30 minutes that we’re meeting with them, just telling them how great we are and, and you know, what they need to do and all that.

We have much more of a back and forth. And so I think if we think of whatever kind of outbound communications that we’re doing, whether you wanna call it sales or networking or whatever, the more that you treat it like you’re having an actual client conversation, the more useful and productive they will be.

In helping you to get to your eventual goal. But you have to set aside this idea that this is all about immediate revenue. And, and unfortunately when we hear about outbound sales, it’s, you know, we’re always thinking about, well, how can we, how can we shake that money tree and, and get some deals going?

And, and we often think about doing these things when we’re most desperate. Right. When we’re looking and, and we see, okay, we had a big client go away. We need to, we need to replace them. And we’ve talked about the fallacy of, of that idea that you can just replace a big client when they go away.

But you need to be thinking about these things in a, in a much longer time horizon. More of a relationship building mindset. And if you do that, inbound works, outbound works, a hybrid works, they all can be part of the puzzle solving device.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, absolutely. And I think. It if you think about it a little bit differently and shift your mindset around it a little bit.

So instead of it being about outbound sales, which I think is scary to a lot of us, it’s scary to me. You think about it as networking and building relationships and being top of mind, being there when they’re ready to make a decision. It’s less scary, I think, because that’s what we do, right? We are relationship builders.

So think about it from that perspective. It’s just a different audience. And if you can do that, if you can shift your mindset around that, I find, I think you’ll find much more success than if you’re thinking about it from an outbound sales perspective.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. So on that note, I would, I would like to thank our listener for making an outbound inquiry of us for our perspectives on this.

That was a little tortured, but what, what’s new? I was trying to think of some way to, to circle it back. But anyway.

Gini Dietrich: Thank you. And we always appreciate listener questions.

Chip Griffin: Always appreciate listener questions because it, it helps us to really speak to the things that that matter most to you.

And hopefully that’s what we’re doing here as much as possible. Giving you practical advice and, and our thoughts and, you know, take it for what it’s worth. Sometimes it’s useful, sometimes, eh. But all the perspective helps you. That’s the same thing with the outbound conversations you’re having. Have as many as you can, get those different perspectives and then figure out what works for you.

So on that note, I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich

Chip Griffin: and it depends.