We will be discussing this particular question more in-depth through multiple episodes this season in the Inbound Sales Journey.
No matter what stage your agency is in, having a solid sales system in place is crucial to long term success. Whether you are a one man show or a 50-person agency, having a solid sales foundation is key to sustainable growth and forecasting the future.
In this episode we’ll dive into the GuavaBox story around sales and what it was like to go from the co-founders handling sales for the agency to bringing on a full-time sales person.
How Do I Build a Sales System for My Agency?
Selling as an Agency Owner
Gray and Andrew wore many hats when starting GuavaBox, sales being just one of the many. For them, it was, as I am sure it is for many other agency owners—not the favorite or most glamorous looking of the hat collection.
Here are some of the battles they faced:
- Intermittent sales activity
- Inconsistent processes
- Lack of intentional prospecting
- Little to know followup with inbound leads
As an agency owner any bits of efficiency you can bake into your day-to-day life is going to help make your work life much much easier. Sales is no exception to that.
Creating an agency sales system for yourself will help keep your business steady and help avoid the crazy peaks when everyone wants to use you at once, and the depressing lows when the well seems to have run dry on leads.
Where to Start
Building a sales system isn’t a one hour commitment—it is a large beast that needs a lot of thought and the buy in of your whole team. It also takes discipline to commit to and fully follow the system you have created. Here are a couple of ideas of where to start:
- Focus on your goals and hypothesis how much activity needs to happen to reach those goals. Be realistic and measure all of your activity.
- Make sure you have the right personnel focusing on the right tasks.
When we talk about goals, we aren’t talking about one large goal that seems impossible and far away. We are talking about a series of small goals that forge the path to that larger more widespread goal. The SMART goal framework is great for helping you to make sure the goals you are making are going to be useful for your agency.
For those who are unfamiliar with SMART goals it is testing to make sure each goal is:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Timely
If it isn’t able to be measured by each of those metrics you need to rethink and reframe the goal you are working on.
Resources to Help
- Mark Roberge’s book – The Sales Acceleration Formula
- Huify’s blog post series. – This is part 1 of 4 which I enjoyed reading and thought I would throw in there for you to enjoy. Huify is a fellow HubSpot partner agency and has done some great work. You can hear an interview with their CEO Josh Harcus talking more about selling inbound through this link.
