[00:03] excited to announce our second speaker for today the lineup is absolutely incredible but to talk to you today about how he built a seven figure SEO for SEO London live from the London Studio please put it together for Joshua
[00:17] George thanks J hey guys good morning good afternoon good evening where you are based in the world and welcome to this presentation s agency so before we dive into the main
[00:33] very quickly who I am for those who are unaware so my name is Joshua George the most British name you could ever have yes I know I've been doing SEO since 2015 I'm the founder of Click slice and SEO agency base right here in the UK as
[00:50] Street not too far from Liverpool Street in London we're a team of 14 SEO professionals as 14 full-time staff and today we we're currently working with 36 clients in multiple niches across the world we've got clients in Ecom space
[01:05] lead generation service SAS health insurance it doesn't matter um we have clients in every single Niche I do not discriminate if clients have budget I'm willing to take them on so another VI I mentioned which I'm not too sure
[01:18] how the government is dealing with their economy but I'm pretty sure don't quote me I'm the only person in the UK to actually offer SEO training to the British government so here's some slides of me presenting to their team in the
[01:30] canary wolf office this was last year 2-day event they literally searched for SEO training in London we ranked number one on Google for that they inquired done the training so again I'm a massive believer of also offering SEO and also
[01:43] being one of the biggest drivers in thinking right cool this guy has a seven figure agency he's based in London he's obviously had it all on the plate to him he's entitled no no no that was not the
[01:58] full-time as a kitchen design kitchen designer in 2015 there's a picture of me at my desk clearly not happy I was working 40 hours a week which isn't the most amount of hours it's a full-time
[02:11] most amount of hours it's a full-time job but I was only making £22,500 a year and I was always sold full full streams of promises pay Rises none of it ever ever happened and never came to fruition so little to say you know I wasn't happy
[02:25] with where I was at now fast forward now to 2023 things have changed a lot since those days you know just this year I bought my first super car a McLaren 570s and of course I had to get it wrapped in the color of my brand for the car people
[02:39] watching Miami Blue is the color and then only 3 weeks ago I bought my first ever property it's a four-bedroom detached house in se6 with two offices jacuzzi the full works this was all achieved through SEO there's no no
[02:52] mysterious go nothing happened in the background this is all as a direct result from my agency click slice so what wanted to do is just walk you for a a lot of people have been asking me recently is it a really good time to
[03:06] start an SEO agency in 2023 with all Ai and all these changes coming out cuz isn't SEO dying bro well I can tell you you know without any Shadow of Doubt my bank account says no I don't mean that
[03:18] in an arrogant way whatsoever I just want to give you the core reality of what actually takes to grow an agency and scale it to seven figures so that is giving you an Insight behind the scenes
[03:30] 7 figure agency and maintain that and also give you a blueprint for how you also give you a blueprint for how you can get there too so when it comes to actually running an agency there are a few different ingredients you need to be
[03:43] successful the first is your Market position so your position in the market client acquisition which I believe is the most important part of any agency you can create the third part is sales so closing those deals and making money
[03:56] and then the third part or four part sorry is operations invoicing and hiring and again something that not a lot of people speak about enough is retention and it isn't just retention from a client aspect this is retention from
[04:08] your staff aspect right if you're getting a players in your agency to grow in scale you want to retain those staff so a really really cool part we'll be going through as well before I get into the first section I want to make it
[04:20] super super clear so you have the right expectation from the start it takes a long time to accept that things take a long time you probably seen lots of people on online doing posts sent out an email did a post on Facebook LinkedIn
[04:33] and you think you can scale very very quickly and I agree you can but it's also not the most sustainable and the most predictable to predictable way to scale if you're basing on your first 30 to 60 days because often you can do a
[04:47] couple of clients but you do the same future you're going to get no client so always have a view when you're creating this agency that you're building a proper long-term business and it's going
[04:59] get there your life is going to be so much more easier and way less stressful much more easier and way less stressful so first up Market position so you have when creating an agency you can go for a niche Focus agency so that could be
[05:14] offering SEO to just a specific Niche such as plumbers so you can be the SEO Plumbing Niche agency out there there's a few Pros that have taken this approach just give you a high level number one it's easier to establish Authority if
[05:27] you speak to a plumbing company and you say I only do marketing for plumbing companies it's going to be very easy to close that deal as a result of being an authority in that Niche you can also charge higher fees as well now the
[05:40] downside to the niche agency is that you have a smaller client potential pull if you only offer SEO to plumbing companies then guess what you can only close especially the UK there's only a limited amount of companies you can offer your
[05:53] services too it also makes it a lot harder to get referrals if you smash that campaign at the water and you do an amazing job that client can only refer knows that runs a similar business as well so again lots of pros and cons the
[06:07] other side is the generic agency now the pros is pretty much the opposite of the cons you have a much larger client pool it's easier to get referrals you're not limited by any individual Niche you work within and again on the con side of
[06:20] things we have a couple as well it's more difficult to establish Authority as thing however I'll show you a couple of ways to overcome this later on in the ways to overcome this later on in the presentation and typically speaking you
[06:33] an expert but again if you can establish Authority you can pretty much get the pros of the niche agency with your generic agency too so people ask me like what is the best one to start like what do you do so I've done loads so this is
[06:47] actually my first SEO agency I've ever created the one I could find anyway it's called pocket rank it's a niche Focus agency so this image is from Wayback machine from I think it says 2017 in September this was SEO for solar panel
[07:02] businesses so I think I emailed every single company solar panel company in the UK at least 20 times when I was running this business and it went well I got a couple of leads got a couple of deals closed hit some good Revenue
[07:15] numbers and then said hey I kind of tapped out in the market and instead of going to the US I said I'm going to create another agency so limo marketing and if you look really closely you'll see nothing changes other than the logo
[07:27] and the picture and the text on the screen so I've done both agencies the problem that I found is I was going from one Niche to another Niche to another Niche and where we are right now with click slice more of a generic Focus
[07:39] agency I mean it's kind of a little hack it's a generic agency but we specialize in e-commerce which is kind of a niche but it's not a niche because there's so many niches within Ecom you can have you know Home Improvement you can have pet
[07:51] products you can have di know whatever it is like there's niches and niches so I typically and personally prefer the the generic way and people always say to me why I have a generic agency go Niche because there's Rich there's riches in
[08:03] niches which is true but there's also broke people in Rich niches too I know so many people that work in really lucrative niches and I know that because don't make that much money so the niche is important but what's even more
[08:17] important is sticking with one type long enough so again it's the long-term mindset you want to have the right strategy and mindset from the day one one thing to another all you're doing is having shiny objects in syndrome you
[08:29] why don't you do Roofing Roofing makes more money and you're just moving and moving and moving that's not the way you want to be growing your agency so client acquisition this is by far the most important part of your agency and the
[08:44] reality the reality is most people struggle to grow their agency because their lead flow is unpredictable in Jan they generate 12 leads in February they they generate 12 leads in February they generate three March one April zero so
[08:56] how can you scale if you're not getting consistent leads right so what I always say and some people don't agree with it but I don't really care because this works really well for me is client acquisition is more important than
[09:08] operation so a lot of people have the mindset where I don't really matter clients for two years three years I'm going to be winning but that isn't client acquisition which is why I spend 95% of my time now you know you're going
[09:24] to get a lot of gain so this is more of a drasic example but if you was to on board five clients every month and then four clients dropped off the following month every year you are still growing by net 12 clients so our minimum fee at
[09:39] click size for National campaigns is £3,000 per month so if we followed this exact worst case scenario by the end of the year in 12 months time we'd be doing £36,000 in monthly recurrent Revenue do that for two and a half years that's a
[09:52] million pound agency you have on your hands and this just shows you just how not saying you want to on board five drop off four of course like don't jump hate I'm just giving you context that client acquisition is where you should
[10:05] be focusing if you really want to grow so there's a lot of different strategies probably the most common that a lot of people have seen and the reason I included this is because it's the same strategy that I used to get our first
[10:17] 189 clients I say 19 because the guy found us organically in the end but we originally reached out through an email but essentially cold email is incredibly people don't do it because they are simply lazy and they want to just do one
[10:31] post on LinkedIn or Twitter or X I should say and then sign a deal but how this works in just in a five-step high level process is number one you want to you want to work with email them and then offer value very important you're
[10:45] offering value number three send him a personalized video audit again you're offering more value then you arrange a sales call and you guessed it again offer more value and then number five you want to close them so the reason
[10:57] based it on value if you're just cold emailing people hey do you want SEO sir do you want to be on page one sir more rankings sir more organic traffic no that's all crap no one does that you want to offer value so this is an image
[11:11] I actually found from my Google Drive um from way back so this is a list that we built I think it was for construction companies in London you can see we get the location they are which is column a um keywords then we have the website URL
[11:24] I make a note on what page of Google I found them on page two page three page four first name last name and of course the personal email address so I say I essentially build your list of people you want to be working with and then you
[11:38] email the exact email template I use go ahead use it it works tremendous I actually used it last month as well had a few calls come from it um so you can plumbing companies consistently generate more inquiries for the last 3 years I
[11:52] did an analysis of the Manchester market and Percy made you a video explaining why your competitors are ranking you in Google and and taking the bulk of work you're currently on page six for the search term plumbing company Manchester
[12:04] not keyword you want to avoid the SEO jargon that's a lot of potential business you're missing out on Fair a bit of fair in there a bit more scarcity video too if you are please let me know and send it over right so whole idea is
[12:18] that you can make a video to let them know where they're going wrong and email actually came from darl Rossa so shout out to Daryl um but I've been into the industry and it still works incredibly well so send out those emails
[12:34] you'll get a lot of responses typically what I found is there's lots of these emails you know mailshake lemus close but it honestly does not matter they're like what tool should I use to email bro should I go for a b c it
[12:49] you use what matters more is taking action right the money is in the implementation so some average numbers that I saw was if I send 1,000 emails rate I know a lot of people are getting higher response rates um I mean I
[13:03] it works for me so again I'm just a big believer of just taking action and just rinse and repeating really so probably could change the subject line but 5% videos so when I first started this it wasn't Loom it was making them on Vimeo
[13:18] close rate on that not everyone has budget not everyone's a good fit that's month from a thousand emails and again the more you perfect this and you know fine- tune subject line you can increase these numbers and make a lot more money
[13:32] first strategy don't overlook it it works incredibly well the second is one Partnerships and essentially all you're trying to do here is build trust with someone who already has a trust of your ideal clients and then ask them to send
[13:46] you an email intro like it is really that simple so I'll give you a good example some potential Partnerships you can reach out to is accountants so my actual personal accountant works with I think it's 188 81 182 different
[14:00] businesses I just told him hey I offer SEO I showed him some case studies and I more money if you put me in touch with these people right and the people who are using my accountant trust my accountant so when he refers me it's a
[14:12] it with your eyes close so you can reach out to accountant web designer is one of my personal favorites PR agencies social media agencies PPC agencies if they don't offer SEO and what you actually find is even if some companies say they
[14:26] them they don't even do it or they Outsource it and my personal personal favorite is e-commerce fulfillment centers so many people are sleeping on this they just reach out to the maybe top two or three um Partnerships I've
[14:39] listed but Ecom fulfillment centers these are literally as they sound wherever you want to you know work with and they stock the products of multiple Ecom Brands if you can earn the trust of one of these Ecom performance censors
[14:52] they are going to send you lead after lead after lead and they know what brand the amount of pallets are shipping out every week so it's a really good approach and trust me these econ performance centers they're not getting
[15:05] single one in the UK already like two three years ago and it's the first time they even saw my email so this is why I don't mind sharing this with you is the and I'll share the template email in just a second but this client right now
[15:20] cax they've been with us for 4 years this was SEC secured through a partnership that I secured on the back end of a e-con fulfillment partner that I just showed you for strategy number two so the clients called humx they are
[15:32] a massive massive company the head office is based in Taiwan they do over a billion pound in Revenue every year insane secured for a partnership a Emil like it has to come from someone who they already trust this is the exact
[15:46] email that I sent to the econ performance center it was hi name I run to ask you how you guys are currently handling the SEO for your clients I'd love to partner up with you guys and in return pay you guys 50% of the first
[16:00] month's payment and then 10% residual for every month thereafter for each away I'm giving them value have some money you know for that for that email you sent me have some money number two of course I'm more happy to send you any
[16:12] of my clients who require your services in return more value have some money and number three happy to also help you out of any SEO you require for your own business too that's the third value the whole email is them them them and that's
[16:27] saying ah you know we're great an SEO we've been doing it for 10 years check like get them excited first and I guess if you're talking more on the adult nich foreplay you know giving them the idea of what's possible and then lead them on
[16:42] and the most important part is once you send this email and they respond is you need to forget jumping on a zoom call you want to zoom down and meet them in real life so when they reply when they reply to your email arrange a meeting
[16:56] something that took me a long time to figure out when I first started click slice is that businesses is all based on relationships relationships are way easier to establish when you're face to face and in real life so don't do the
[17:10] could close it but you're most lik going to go wrong take them out for lunch treat them show them who you are and then you want to show why you're so good in real life so these are some referral emails we get all the time um I think
[17:23] the top one was from like two weeks two weeks ago I forget we get so many but this is constantly we getting emails of people actually saying hey Josh they were an SEO can you speak to them can you help them again super warm leads I
[17:35] actually had one come through whilst I was making a presentation so this is last week 22nd November 13 hours ago again we have a partnership they're leads because we have lots and lots of Partnerships too so it works incredibly
[17:49] well the strategy number three so this is one I've been doing this year quite a bit and it works really well it's quite similar to strategic Partnerships but it's it's more of a long-term play with this one so how it works is number one
[18:02] you want to find an influencer in your ideal client Niche number two you then want to jump on the podcast or the YouTube channel of course blow them away with value and now what most people do is they say hey thanks have me on your
[18:14] show if you need anything let me know see you later that's an amateur what we want to do is upsell after the podcast and then offer to do the SEO for free now stick with me people saying why do it for free do it discounted I'm all
[18:27] about giving value value value and value because I know when I offer value it always comes back to me in the form of big big paychecks so you want to upsell them after the podcast offer through the SEO for free of course get them results
[18:40] don't get results good luck trying to you know get success from this strategy and then you simply ask them for a shout out like it's really really that straightforward but not enough people are doing this so I done this with a
[18:53] really big influencer in the Ecom space um we actually did the SEO for him for I think seven weeks or just under two months and we actually blew it up so I've told him hey why don't you go into your LinkedIn and Shout about this and
[19:05] not expect that throughout the years I partnered with my fair share of SEO agencies but none of them have ever delivered on the Promises like ever we Google's first page is like striking gold dust and does wonders for your
[19:18] bottom line however finding an agency that can actually get you there is a skeptical when these guys told me they could help and he basically saying he found a really good agency if you're interested send him a message and I'll
[19:31] guest who actually wrote this message and sent it to them again I'm making his life easy so he then posted this on LinkedIn he then sent them my calendar first then I told them my price to start from ABC if you're interested to book a
[19:46] image it was 6 months ago which is about June July and after responding to all the leads he sent there was 50 in total this is my inbox all calendary calls 19th of June 20th 20th 20th 21st 21st 22nd these are all highly qualified
[20:03] already in my email by just being upfront about the price uh and how it works and we actually closed five deals um from all of these calls I think I did 24 23 24 in total close five of those deals and one of the companies I close
[20:17] you can imagine in Canada they've been on Dragon Den again I won't name them the site very very shortly so again another client that I wouldn't have got get these big deals through Partnerships they work so so well so coming up next
[20:34] touched on before he introduced me is inbound AKA SEO so we sell SEO and we also do SEO for our own site so if you search for SEO agency London SEO
[20:46] consultant London SEO expert SEO specialist SEO anything to do with SEO in London you'll see click size ranking in the top three and we get loads and loads of leads of this and the great thing about this is this is predictable
[20:58] predict you know your monthly traffic based on ctrs you can basically predict your conversion rate and over time you'll get more and more reliable data so we do a lot of SEO for our site if you plug our site into AHF you'll see at
[21:12] has actually gone up recently to be honest with you um we rank for like 3.5 th000 keywords Dr 54 if that means anything to anyone out there um in terms of value of the traffic which is the organic search on the right hand side
[21:25] you look at the value $62,000 per month so if we didn't do SEO to get the same cost us over $60,000 a month that's over half a million in ad spend or you could just do SEO and get it for free so our traffic
[21:38] has been getting more and more aggressive and you know taking a very is the first year I've got really aggressive with growth and you can pretty much see it from the chart as well like Jan Feb early on you can see a
[21:50] about that dip that's fake Google search console is going up I can reassure you later no people going to try to call me out on that but tough luck um and I know SEO like do I want to rank for SEO London or SEO this cuz someone told me
[22:07] leads you get from SEO related keywords are trash cool story bro like the McLaren the house has come from SEO money so I'm not going to argue with ask people oh really like you had a bad experience what do you used to rank for
[22:21] oh I used to rank four SEO in the smallest town I've never heard of oh okay cool makes sense right you need to be targeting the right terms now arason popping up and trying to attack me like trying to come for our site and also
[22:34] compete in London and the honest truth is like I don't sh share this stuff because I'm trying to mislead everyone like just go and do SEO like this stuff doing lots and lots of sales schol you start to realize there's a lot of money
[22:47] out there for a lot of people and sometimes clients have budget but they they can go to someone else so there's money for everyone and I just really want to see everyone win like I've come from a humble background and I've
[22:59] not the biggest agency out there but I've done very well for myself so again that's really something I'm passionate about so you're probably thinking where different strategies to get clients well my advice is to focus on one strategy
[23:14] until number one you've either perfected it or number two you have more than enough resources to explore another strategy without compromising the first one what most people do is they try cold email for a week they get a list of 600
[23:26] to try Partnerships going to try just focus on one master it make money and you're trying to do when when you're taking this approach is Master One pivot and actually create a multi-channel lead generation system so this is how we are
[23:41] currently at at the moment you have your agency at the top then you have leads you're refining your templates and seeing what works best your subject lines you have Partnerships web designers social media agencies whatever
[23:53] it is sending you consistent leads you have inbound from SEO your generic pages SEO London industry Pages SEO for dentist again another page we have we're ranking on page one your location Pages again all bring in consistent reliable
[24:07] going to be exploring a bit more next year paid ads we honest truth we haven't don't need to we get a lot of leads as it is but essentially you want to diversify the way you generate leads if you're all relying on paid ads and your
[24:22] what your leads are gone you're all relying on SEO and you get hit by aggo update guess what your leads are gone so diversify your lead generation diversify your lead generation Machine Sales a really interesting one
[24:35] away and you're getting these leads the next part is making money so Discovery more exciting than Discovery call is there's no better email than getting one of one of those into your Gmail so the
[24:50] truth that I realized about most most people that run agencies is most seos suck at sales because they sell the wrong thing like I've seen so many calls sales sales calls with other agency owners when I used to do a bit of
[25:04] Consulting a couple of years ago during lockdown and when I'm on those calls saying the most basic things that businesses don't want to hear hey do you want SEO do you want higher rankings do you want more organic traffic I can get
[25:18] invests in SEO because they want these things right what you should be doing is focusing on Revenue based results such as I can help inrease your Revenue by putting your business in front of more people forget the SEO jargon or I can
[25:32] help generate your business another £60,000 in Revenue every month or even another question which gets them to think more about business Roi and actual benefit of this on their business such as are there any limitations on how many
[25:45] orders you can fulfill a month sell Revenue based results and the reason you want to be doing this is because business owners understand business talk amateurs like you don't want to be talking about eat on their topical
[25:59] Authority like they don't care all they want to do is get the business seen and business scen which ultimately always comes down to the bottom line if it's a service business it's more inquiries if it's an Ecom business it's more Revenue
[26:13] focus on those two things so this is my sales process from like a high level have all our lead generation machine in the background generating leads and our main CTA on click slice is Discovery cool so it's quite a high barrier C
[26:28] didn't see the point someone would send me an email hey I want SEO i' would say okay hey cool let's jump on a call it's just another step there's no need so we have calendary calls um so when someone books a call with us it automatically
[26:41] gets pulled into our C CRM we use zapia zapia to does to do that then number two automatic email touch Point gets fired out to this person and it's basically just thank you for booking the call look forward to speaking with you and we also
[26:54] a bit excited we actually have a really good email written for this is like hey business and we have like lots of video testimonials from previous clients and call right this is an experience isn't just you're hiring us I want you to get
[27:08] excited and feel like we're giving you VIP treatment once uh next part once I send that automatic email or once it goes out we have a discovery call and a discovery call is literally me try trying to qualify if they're a good fit
[27:21] for our services most leads don't even get past stage free right if I don't them like there's no point in me talking to them then if they are a good call a second email touch Point great to speak let's run through a custom strategy to
[27:34] help you achieve X Y and Z everything they just told me on a discovery call the questions I actually ask businesses on these Discovery calls to give you more context and then you know if it is a good fit we go through a proposal walk
[27:46] through and I basically present them a solution to go overcome the problem and we just close a client right there on that proposal call so the question I get a lot is the CRM St how do organizer lead so we use pipe drive to track all
[28:00] booked through cendi again automatically pulled into pipe Drive we've got a few different columns I had to obviously gray them out because not not all these ignore the first column for pending but
[28:13] that's where everyone gets pulled in automatically once I finish the and move it into Discovery call completed if it is a good call and then research and proposal once a client books a proposal call I move it AC cross
[28:27] so I genuinely see this as a game it's fun I'm just moving stuff along and I more money it's going to make me or the more likely it's to make me money so you need to be organized initially I was not doing this I was using Google Sheets to
[28:40] save money like dude pipe Drive is like $29 a month like just make your life you more money which is selling and not spending more time in your Google Sheets really important to organize your leads cuz I can open pipe drive and I can see
[28:55] booked if I'm trying to get really aggressive this month then guess what I marketing so maybe I could do some paid ad campaigns get more active on social media it allows you to see very quickly and also project in terms of what you're
[29:07] going to be turning over in terms of client and revenue in the next quarters as well so once you've organized your leads you have the discovery call right so I have a seven-step process uh I'll just click them all up on the screen
[29:19] right now and walk you through them so what you really want to be doing is number one learning more about the business and the most important part they tell you the pain points you want to use that in your proposal to sell
[29:33] problem to your solution make that make some money go on a holiday like very important to understand that if you with or what they've strug struggled with in the past good luck trying to
[29:46] close them second thing I like to do is identify their competitors and keywords research I then want to show them errors and problems with the site so if they tell me they want to rank for I don't know pet food like dog pet food and I go
[29:59] on the dog pet food category page and there's no H1 I be like hey look you're missing the basic thing but I don't get too technical I don't show this and I basic things that hey you need to do this you don't have that so showing
[30:11] errors is really good it helps paint Authority also helps kind of paint you talking about just don't go too deep that's where most amateurs go and try and sound clever the more you're going to sound dumb is what I've
[30:25] technical oh we can put an internal Link in there check the keyword density add an internal link you over optimize there and the clients don't even know SEO they you lose them you've lost the bag so once you show them errors and problems
[30:38] an insight into a strategy that solves the problem so oh we can fix this for you by doing ABC straightforward then what you want to do is probably the most important part of the discovery call is work out the ROI for solving that
[30:52] problem if you just say I can fix this and you'll be on the top of page one going to make more money am I going to get more leads how many leads so if you show you how to do in just a second you know it's it makes it a no-brainer and
[31:07] that you just want to show them proof that you can actually solve their I've actually done this for like five other businesses like I'm not going to some live Google searches right now so again you need the evidence to be able
[31:19] to do this and then lastly show them investment options so for number five no-brainer I use this little calculator that we've created and essentially what it does is you put in the average monthly search volume with the keywords
[31:33] client did say I want to be on page one for dog food and you work out from aift on that call by sharing your screen that did 25,000 searches you can say to the another 2,375 visitors based on the organic CTR
[31:48] can show that on the core if you want I always do your website converts about 2% bit lower could be a bit higher then that's roughly Another 47.5 48 CS how
[32:00] is actually for a kitchen e-commerce client but you're putting that out you know the aov the average order value and it gives you a projected monthly Revenue so I'll say to the client Okay cool so our prices start from £3,000 per month
[32:12] so would you be happy to generate £40,000 in revenue for only investing £3,000 of course it's a Nob brainer cuz I'm selling Revenue based results I'm selling traffic I'm selling what they want money and that's the thing that
[32:25] understand understand that so once You' done that call it's decision time so you need to ask yourself is that person a good fit for your agency if they if they are then go ahead and send a proposal if they're not then Chuck that lead in the
[32:39] bin as soon as possible most people go wrong is because leads that are not a good fit they still send a proposal and then they check them in a bin after like doing this and I know it can be hard when you're starting out you want to you
[32:53] to but unfortunately that's never going to happen no matter how good you out sells and even if it's your agency again it took me quite a while to understand this so don't make the same mistake I made anyone is not a good fit Chuck them
[33:05] in the bin and I always say like don't hold on to leads and this is the average agency owner carrying the unqualified leads further into the sales to win and make a lot of money but little does he know he's an amateur he's
[33:19] thinker and he's not even thinking about the opportunity cost so don't be this guy this is probably Me 3 four years ago so when it comes to sending the actual proposal you have lots of different options I literally could not kid you
[33:33] I've tried every single proposal software out there in the market and the one that I always recommend is better proposals I have no affiliation with literally don't care I don't don't get paid but this is what I'm telling you to
[33:45] be the best from my personal experience I tried all of them I actually told um Charlie a lot of you probably will know Charlie um watching the presentation from minty digital he has another SE agency uh in Spain I told him about the
[33:57] Birmingham and he's been using it ever since and he's closing a lot of clients and it gives you document statistics as well so you can see Charlie sent 15 proposals he's closed seven of them that's a 46.6% conversion rate really
[34:11] average it takes him eight days to actually go ahead and close a deal so can't measure if you can't measure you can't improve so again really good software in terms of my actual proposal this is literally a screenshot of it
[34:26] when I sent last week I keep it very straight and simple like I don't like to a few sections on the left hand side don't know why I haven't had that in there to honest with you this is the
[34:39] needs a bit more refining but it works really well I me close a lot of deals I want to be seen for we then have a Content strategy so how we actually incorporate those keywords in part of the site whether it's on page SEO blogs
[34:53] have link building then we have technical SEO like that is my four buckets for the proposal all the eat all that staff sight speed it all comes under those brackets what I see a lot of people do especially our previous sales
[35:06] agency his proposal was ridiculously long it was like 50 pages you're going to lose interest I I never understand the logic of having a long proposal like someone the longer it takes for them to get through your proposal the longer
[35:22] you to get paid so keep it short and sweet and just remove all the fluff and the last few tabs of this is the investment how much it cost Ys again bit more reassurance and social proof and then the next steps sign let's get
[35:35] started really that straightforward so again we use better proposals it's all branded it matches our same brand as our website and once you send it you need to proposal most will sign on the call but it's it's going to be very unlikely
[35:49] and how confident that person is in you so it depends on your sales ability but it's a no don't just let them go like most people do you want to have an automated follow-up sequence which we have already
[36:02] proposal in three days they get an automatic email touch point four days they get another automatic email touch point and they get another one on the fifth day so I like to increase amount of days between each touch point so I'm
[36:16] not spamming them and you know it's always it's always different for each WhatsApp message or a call him it doesn't always have to be email so again show you you need to be following up because the money is in the followup and
[36:30] those clients actually do convert into sales so this is actually the stats for click slice based from August to October been handling the sales myself for the last three months we've gone separate
[36:43] ways of ourselveses guy but essentially you can see I send 19 proposals I closed 12 of those deals which is a 63.16% close rate which is really really good I haven't actually met any agency owner touching those numbers not to to
[36:58] my own horn um and on average this is actually a lie it takes 15 days to close but we had one client take months and months and months to sign so it's essentially you want to measure refine and improve I've actually never shared
[37:12] exclusive access to what we use for proposals and kind of what metrics you should be doing so Charlie was on 40% which is really really strong like if I had to sell this guy doing 40% I'd be absolutely through the moon um but again
[37:25] because I'm the founder doing the calls it's a lot easier to build trust they I'm on the call and I'm not just kind of handing off to a sales Junior so again recommend you should do if you do operate you know in your business then
[37:38] going to be the sales so next part operations now I know mean you don't want to give any operations any care and attention so I
[37:50] like to treat my agency operations like a military operation now I don't mean other or like we can't joke and have fun in slack I mean in terms of my structure so we have nine different departments within click SLI we have a sales
[38:04] department we have a keyword research team Department we have a operations Department we then have an onpage SEO department and then we have free different departments for different types of content we have a blog post
[38:16] content team a guest post content team and a Target page content team then we have two more teams the link building team and the technical SEO team so have free different departments for Content when your blog post writer can
[38:29] write the content that you want to rank on the client's page and the reason being is I actually had one person doing everything the problem with that is when that person messes up and you fire them you then lose this person across three
[38:43] different departments so every every Department of the content team gets affected and it also makes it more risky for you because one person working have more leverage over you and they can
[38:55] that's exactly what my last person done and I didn't like that position I felt uncomfortable and it didn't make sense so now if one of our BL you blog post content writers decides to leave that's fine we just hire another blog post
[39:07] going fine our link building team's working and our Target page content team is writing as well so it doesn't affect other parts of the business so I found when trying to scale because naturally your team are going to leave they're
[39:19] going to go other places a better offer no longer want to do it so again having this military structure just minimizes as much disruption in the business as possible so to see things visually as I'm more of a visual learner as well
[39:32] this is our team structure so you have me at the top pretty much doing some of I speak directly with our operations team and our sales team below research team so this keyword research person does not do anything for our
[39:47] existing clients they only work selectively and solely with our sales team to do the key research to start sending out these proposals or maybe that the client hasn't even told us about so they work directly with the
[40:01] self team so they speak with me and I know exactly what's going on and that way I'm not bothering my existing team to service potential clients that aren't even clients yet my existing team is a people that are paying me money that is
[40:13] what they are for so the operations team they oversee the onpage SEO department and they also oversee the link building team so you know I don't care what you say any part of SEO to me comes under on page SEO whether it's technical it's
[40:26] changes on the website whether it's Target page content blog post guest post them an on page manager or a campaign manager they pretty much oversee the whole campaign and of course they Lia with the link building team as well so
[40:39] refining this a lot over the last couple of years seeing what really works best for us personally this is hands down the best person because you don't have too speak to the Target page content team I don't want to hear from the blog post
[40:52] them they go to the on page team if it's important they'll go to the operations back to me so again having the right team structure and the military approach organized so in terms of actually how your serviceing these clients in your
[41:05] soop your standard operating procedures we use payo which is basically a project project management system some people use Trello assana Monday and I've seen so many arguments in Facebook groups no Trello is better than assana I disagree
[41:19] Monday dude it does not matter like as long as you have SS and you're actually fulfill your client campaigns that is enough again you'll probably see a pattern with me the way I approach things I really don't care what I use I
[41:33] just care that I'm using something because you can make money with any of these damn tools and like I said the main Money Maker for most agencies is in have really good stops um some image from like our month one so when a client
[41:47] checklist of items we do in month one month two month three so for client on boards we audit the site we check the index in some basic optimizations planning and we set up some basic stuff so if you to click the folder for setup
[41:59] it would open up another page where we set up the client dashboard set up the monthly reports we then email the client um access to the dashboard as well again email we don't waste time we're very very structured we have stops for our
[42:13] but you can see we only change out the parts that are highlighted in yellow and it just seems personalized that we've actually spent time and of course we just have to create the login URL the username uh and part which takes about 2
[42:27] minutes so we on board clients very very quickly and your client success rate is a direct result of your stop so again I'll make it very clear client acquisition is the most important part but it doesn't mean operations is not
[42:39] and make sure you have refined your system over the months and years you've been working in your agency so this is a cent we work with in the US um believe which is why I showed the image but they're called Cutthroat Club they sell
[42:52] blades Cutthroat razors and they're ranking like extremely well and our actually had really positive feedback from from this client about our stops as well because we're so streamlined we reply to all emails in 24 hours max
[43:05] sometimes even 12 internal Communications with our team we use slack so we always have a team chat which you can see is the main part of you look I've obviously blurred it all out because that's our client names but
[43:17] essentially we have a channel for each individual client and then within that channel we have the on page SEO manager the link building the operations and the relevant content person on that team so everyone is there together communicating
[43:29] on that campaign I actually have all of these channels muted I not too much involved in your operations these days um but if someone adds me I will get give my opinion on that campaign so I'm not the one doing the work but I still
[43:42] obiously a lot of the strategy and slack is a game changer for us like we've been using slack not slack um Skype sorry when I first started the agency and yeah everything so yeah highly recommend using slack for sure in terms of Art
[43:56] report in and kind of how we operate we use agency analytics again similar to our proposal uh proposal software I've tried so many different reporting I won't name that is actually like half the price of AA of agency analytics and
[44:12] know I would say I'm a business guy first then I'm an SEO second I want to reduce cost and increase margins and make more money so I went for that other horrible it was laggy clients were complaining about the report so honestly
[44:27] appreciate is not the cheapest so if you are starting out it's not you know it's not the most beginner friendly so to speak but agent analytics is insane you dashboard send automated reports you can pull in anything through API search
[44:41] console data Facebook Google ads and just give them one Hub to check the whole campaign so again really really good um and you can get an app on your app to clients cuz I think it kind of trains the wrong pattern of them
[44:53] minutes but but essentially that is of your client reporting need so we go a step further so most agencies will do a bonus because not all of them do do it actually but essentially we do qcrc
[45:07] calls so every quarter we'll jump on a call with our clients and basically just ask them how is business and not enough agency owners are doing this right they just do the keywords do the links do the blogs and just assume the client's happy
[45:21] two that's not always the case you know just because they're getting traffic understanding what problems your clients have is going to help you retain that feedback with the client we've been doing them over Zoom for the last year
[45:35] we're going to be doing them face to face for all of our UK clients so we've just hide out for the week and we're biting all of our clients down in the UK to meet us face to face again build that relationship whine and dine them take
[45:49] reassurance that we are you know we are here to help them and we do care about their campaign so again most people you say why don't you take your clients out just want to do this I can't be bothered and like that is the wrong approach like
[46:02] speaking to your clients and treating them nice and if you don't don't start your boxes playing PlayStation all day do affiliate marketing like that is my advice invoicing is interesting one again I see a lot of posts in groups
[46:17] invoice like what do I do should I terminate the campaign should I give him a second warning third warning like life is too short to be chasing unpaid right there's a lot of stuff going on in your private life Health family friends
[46:32] chasing invoices so when we work with clients mandatory all clients must sign a direct debit mandate prior to the campaign starting I do not care how case that it could make if they don't sign this mandate I will not work with
[46:47] them because if I'm not getting paid it means I have to pay for my team and I margins go down it's wasting my time chasing I just don't want to be doing set up all of our direct debit mandates and we use zero for our invoicing the
[47:00] two sync together job done like really that straightforward so I highly with direct debit mandates and you just don't have to worry about getting paid you get paid you tell go cardless request of funds on a day that you want
[47:13] part as you're scaling you've got your leads coming in you're closing you're doing your operations you going have to hire more team members right so your agency is only as good as your team and your team are only as good as your soaps
[47:26] so a lot of people say to me like yeah I'm trying to attract a players but like no one's joining my agency like how do I hire the best talent in the market and tell me something good about your agency yeah we're doing like 4K a month and we
[47:39] what like why is a a player going to want to join your agency like the best an a player business so create a business where a players actually want to work so I spent a lot of time doing this probably before covid so like three
[47:54] years ago now and just give given our agency more USPS to make it easier for then give our team members more security because we got guaranteed leads they're so like I said the training for the government no one else has done that I
[48:08] have a lot of courses for sale on udem me I've tght SEO to over 100,000 people there's so many other cool things as well um that I don't have enough time to want to attract a players you need to create an a player business so our
[48:21] hiring process is probably very straightforward um a lot people over agencies I mean it all depends on your audience and who you have so I've been courses and create my own audience of basically I think there's 7,000 people
[48:36] and when I hire I can just post a job in there and people have taken my courses I who I am and they're invested in the agency so but back in the day what we used to do is we'd have our job application number one to of a hiring
[48:49] process and then we'd basically create jobs on upwork people per hour Facebook groups networking events wherever I can go and just get people to fill the job funnel right but a highing marketing funnel people apply we then interview
[49:03] skill-based test because so many people's CV looks amazing and they say they can do amazing stuff but then when you ask them to do that they're like what they're doing they're confused and you know the real colors come to the
[49:16] surface so a skill-based test is really important if they pass it we hire it and by default for every person we hire we have a 3mon probation period if they're not good no emotions they have to go like you can't get too tied up with your
[49:29] you know a lot of business owners get very close to the staff and talk a lot about personal life and I think that's good but don't do that too early on into to find it hard to fire them if they're not performing so yeah fre fre month
[49:42] probation is compulsory so this is actually a role that we hired for last I'm you can tell I'm not in touch with the hiring I don't do the hireing but essentially is for a junior SEO assistant we had over over 100
[49:56] applications in 24 hours we had to close the form there was too many submissions they're doing amazing they've been here for us again not even past probation but really nice person I got a really good feeling about him so over time you're
[50:09] kind of Google forms of questions for each individual role and when you hire online you've got all the work done so it gets a lot lot easier my advice would be to don't waste time now creating all of these like job roles for link Builder
[50:24] a guest post content wrers just grow in scale and then as the leads come in and start to refine that stuff in the back end so what to look out for when hiring so I like to look out for skills that you can't teach right if I want to get
[50:38] they can be great at link building Greater Outreach greater communication have a great email list that's great but like that's not that exciting to me um so I like to hire people that have a really good work ethic that have really
[50:51] good listening skills they can adapt to pretty much any situation and they show pretty much get these four things out of someone on an interview if you ask the right questions because you know a work ethic if someone works hard but they
[51:03] trust them that they're going to work hard enough to find out how to actually overcome that problem so when it comes to actually hiring these people next part you want to do is retain them right so the best way to retain a players is
[51:16] to align the growth plans with specific motivators so what I found is not everyone has the same motivator right if you ask some of your staff like actually motivates them one will say money I I just want to make so much money and just
[51:29] have a happy life and buy this and buy that whatnot right other people don't good at what they do words of affirmation right and understanding this is really really important so a good example right if someone in my team
[51:43] wants to head up their own department but lacks organization skills then it's my job to help them become better at organization things right if you bring role because someone internally is not a good fit that's not a good fit thing
[51:55] they've told you they want to do that so again it's on you to actually help them Reach that goal so they can achieve what they want to do be happy and retain that person at the agency and again every team member has a different motivator so
[52:08] you it's your job as a Founder to get that out of them understand what needs then help them achieve their goals they stay win-win for both you and them so last thing I'll show you is our appraisals so we do appraisals for all
[52:22] level they are I want to retain all my staff I've lost too many in the early and stuff like that but essentially this is a screenshot of our appraisals we do essentially what you do is compile a list of really good questions that gets
[52:38] them to think and for you to understand exactly where they're at as well so we I won't go through all them just for time but one of the most important parts that we do do in these appraisals is we ask all the other team members for free
[52:51] areas for improvement and that way I get in holistic approach as to where they're Channel feedback and make sure I can tweak the campaign or the say the growth to make sure they retain in the coming months and they get what they want so
[53:07] skip them they take time but if you're here for the long-term growth and you predictable business that you can scale both from clients and a team aspect then everything going for a lot of information I hope you enjoyed it tons
[53:21] I've never shared before um if you have any questions again I think my socials Charles will share with you after but thanks for thanks for watching