Hey, everyone! Welcome to this week's actionable episode of The Agency Accelerator Podcast. 

This week we are talking all about lead generation and specifically, Outbound Lead Generation. I'm really excited to have my guest, Christian Banach, with me. He has a really different perception and a different view of lead generation to the one that I typically have. That's one of the reasons why I love having guests on the podcast because I don't always agree with them or I don't always have the same viewpoint but their viewpoints are very valid and clearly working for them and their customers.

We're talking all about outbound lead generation, cold calling, cold emailing and so on. Make sure you grab a pen and let's get on with the episode. 

This week's episode of the podcast is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that is loved by agencies around the world. With Cloudways, agencies can focus on growing their clients whilst Cloudways takes care of all the hosting related complexities. 

Now, Cloudways is offering an exclusive discount for The Agency Accelerator Podcast listeners. So, visit cloudways.com and use the promo code AGENCY15 to get 15% off for three months on the hosting plan of your choice. 

Hey, everybody! Welcome to this week's episode of The Agency Accelerator. We are talking about business development, which is a topic that we've visited a number of times but is probably one of the most important topics that we can cover.

I'm really excited to have him with me today, Christian Banach. Did I pronounce your surname correctly, Christian? Christian has been an agency owner, a sales team leader and a new business development. His passion is reinvigorating agency leaders and empowering them with confidence in their future. 

Now, I also noticed Christian that you were a concert promoter before that. So, I'm really interested to learn how you made the leap from concert promoter to the agency world. 

Well, thank you so much for having me first and foremost Rob. I am really looking forward to chatting with you here today. My career which I think is not too different from a lot of people in the agency space. It wasn't something I necessarily set out to do. I started a business as you had mentioned in high school, which really came out of a need that I thought. I was 16-17 years old and going to some of what we call here juice bars or teen nightclubs. Then, I was really just not happy with the music that was being played at these venues.

I was always entrepreneurial. The latest incarnation of my entrepreneurialism, even at that age, was that I'm gonna do one of these events on my own. I gathered a bunch of friends together. We rented a banquet hall. We booked the DJs that we thought you know were interesting and exciting. The result was, we had 1000 people show up and the event went incredibly well. That led to the idea to do another one.

Throughout college those events grew from banquet halls into concert venues. Eventually grew into working with artists like Lady Gaga, Pitbull and T-Pain. Some really great award winning artists. That's what the business was for the first, five (5), six (6) or 7 years.

I was then approached by an experiential marketing agency who had a local activation. I'm based in Chicago and they had something going on in Chicago. They got into a jam and they needed some people to feed on the street to help with the activation.They knew we had concert promotion capabilities which lended itself well to this particular activation. Then, we give it a shot. 

We went out. We did it and executed it flawlessly for them. That led to another activation and others. Also, other agencies found out about us ,so we're working directly with agencies for a while. The light bulb went on and we thought, “Why are we working with the middleman here? Why don't we try to go directly to the brand ourselves?”

Fast forward, we ended up working with some great brands like Allstate and Toyota. Eventually, half of our business became the concert promotions and the other half was more of the corporate experiential in event marketing. That's something I set out to do. Just sort of fell into it but I really loved it. It was really exciting especially when you're a concert promoter. You're putting your money on the line for all these events. It was certainly a different way of going about things when you're using some more corporate dollars to produce some events.

Yeah. I reckon a lot of people will be able to relate to your story not as a concert promoter but just how circumstance and opportunity leads you in one direction. I think a lot of people end up running their agencies because they might have started freelancing and it's grown. They thought that they needed some extra resources and so on. I just want to start with this question. We're talking about everything to do with business development today, and I just said that I suspect you and I have very similar outlook. Then, it'll be interesting to see if this is the case. 

So see if you can relate to this. When I meet a prospect, an agency prospect, and I asked them, How do you get your new business? Invariably, they tell me they've got all their business through word of mouth referral, and they're quite proud about that. Puff up their feathers. Of course, we all know there are some fundamental flaws with that and they probably hit a brick wall, which is why they come to talk to you or me. Is that something that you commonly see? That's how they've relied on growing their agency up until the point they engage with you? 

Yes. I would say the same thing as you. 95% of the agencies that I speak with have grown through word of mouth or referrals. It's gotten them to a certain point. However, they inevitably do hit that brick wall and they're looking for other options on how to grow. Also, they may be looking for growth in a certain direction, a certain type of client or they just need more leads. But inevitably, at some point, that well of referrals and word of mouth isn't sufficient any further.

Sure. As someone said to me the other day, which I thought was so true. The word of mouth and referrals is not a strategy but it's just an opportunity and it's great. Also of course, we want to nurture that and all the rest of it. Though there's a whole bunch of pitfalls with it, including the quality of the leads and when those leads are going to come in.

So, you've met this agency. That's their starting point. What do you do with them next? What's your advice and what journey do you take them through, to work out what they should be doing? 

I think again and I'm in the same boat. I think word of mouth referrals are a bonus. It is the way I look at it but it's not a strategy. One of the first things that we do with our clients is really take a look at an audit, the work and body of work that they've had and really try to understand what we call a pivotal problem.

What are the challenges that these companies have been coming to you, for you to solve?  We try to find commonalities between those challenges. From there, identify what are those pain points? Are you doing anything different in the marketplace with the way you're solving those challenges in those problems?

Usually, it's tough sometimes for most agencies to articulate that because they've never really thought about the challenges that they're actually solving; they know how they're solving them and the work that they're actually doing, but they don't really know or they don't think about, what is that challenge? 

That's the first thing that we always do to start off with. Do that audit and try to find some common themes. From there, we could really start to build out a strategy around those pain points that clients are experiencing.

Yeah, also what's your view on how niche an agency should be? When again, you might meet them and they might say, “We're a WordPress development agency, and that's our niche.” Is that really niche enough? But what's your view on that? 

I think when you're implementing more of an outbound, proactive strategy for new business, it's really critical to have a niche specialisation. That might be a sector like you’re great at food and beverage. That could be a discipline of marketing. It could be regional. You're great in a certain market but usually it's a combination of all of those.

There's just so many agencies that are out there all vying for the same level of business. To really kind of breakthrough these days, you really have to be an expert in something or even a couple areas. I don't know if you have to put all your eggs in exactly one basket but you need at least two (2) or three (3) foremost special areas of specialisation, to really cut through because these clients are not going to want to work with the generalist agency in most situations.

Also, maybe that was sufficient when you're doing more of a word of mouth referral strategy because there's some level of trust. They know you through the referral, so they're more willing to maybe give you some of that work. But, if you're trying to get business from a cold prospect, you really have to demonstrate you're an expert at something or else they're not going to give you the time of day. 

Yes and also, if you're a generalist, then how do you differentiate yourself? Well, you differentiate yourself by being cheaper or by promising ridiculous levels of service. Then, both of those are a recipe for disaster, right?

Also, talk to me about some of the outbound communications that work for agencies that you work with, or some of the things that you see working well now. What kind of tactics might you use? 

It's really what we're seeing is a Multi-Channel Multi-Touch Based Approach. We really are big on cold email. We're still big on cold calling. Both used together because it's so easy these days for anybody to fire off an email. Through that, these executives' inboxes are just flooded. So, we'd also like to use the phone as a strategy. 

A lot of people say cold calling is dead and that has not been our experience.When working with clients we are and they're setting for themselves, a large volume of calls still from the phone.

But in addition, it's just another touch point for more of an Omni-Channel type of approach. They may even respond to you via email. However, that voicemail that you left may also influence them because it makes you stand out from the hundreds of other emails that they may have received from another agency. The other thing is, it's got to be multi-touch as well. I talked with agencies a lot that said that they’ve experimented and worked on some outbound programmes before, but  just didn't get anything out of it.

Then, when I kind of start peeling back the layers of the onion, I find out, they may have fired off one email and they sort of just expected business to just flow in from there. We're generally doing fairly aggressive sprints of seven (7), eight (8) or nine 9 touch points over the period of 30 days or less. What we're seeing is, that's just what it's going to take because there's just so much noise in the marketplace. I think agencies should recognize that. You would never just buy a TV ad and run it one time and just assume business is going to flow in, right?

You need multiple touches in order to really start to build that awareness and get people to respond. So, Multi-Touch Multi-Channel is very important. 

Yeah. I think there's obviously lots of different stats on this, but you need to have, like, seven touchpoints with someone before they're going to engage with you. Like you say, if you're doing that from multiple ways, then you're much more likely to be heard. 

I think we live in an immediate world at the moment where we want immediate results. We want immediate, immediate gratification and we're distracted by all of these things. I see as well that someone's tried something and they've given up really quickly rather than recognising that. 

Actually, I really need to stick with us. I always say, why do you think Coca Cola's continually advertising coke on the TV? They don't just need to run one ad that you see once in your life and you buy coke. They need to be front to mind at the exact moment you're thinking I could really do with a coke, and that's when you're going to see the adverts.

We need to apply that same sort of strategy to our marketing as well. There are any others so that you talk about cold emailing, cold calling and any other strategies that you're using with your agencies? 

Yes. I think a couple other things that have really come to light over the last couple of years. Especially, personalisation in your outreach where I think when I was really starting to get heavy into outbound, five (5) or six (6) years ago. It was okay to kind of send out more of a mass email.

Maybe you might tailor it to an industry, but you weren't tailor innocently down to the company or the individual. However, that's what we're seeing in order to cut through these days. Kind of piggyback off your example of Coca Cola. If you're looking to win a soft drink company, you might have a general email kind of who you are, what you do and what the offer you bring. 

But, when you're reaching out to Coca Cola, you need to research them. What the CMO said? What the CEO said? What are some of the challenges they're experiencing? You need to personalise it to that particular company. If you're then going to reach out to Pepsi, it is going to have slightly different challenges than Coke is having. 

You have to do the same level of research and then customise that message to Pepsi. It has to be unmistakable that your message was written directly for that company. Otherwise, all of these emails that executives are getting from you are just gonna be deleted.You've got to really look like it's a human sending a message.

Really interesting. I'm running a workshop in November with a partner, and we're still working on it. The theme of the workshop is “How technology can help personalise your marketing?”. I guess on the one, if we think of one extreme of completely cold calling or cold contacting and the other extreme of very personalised researched emails or contact as you're talking about. What does that middle ground look like? And, how can technology help you expedite that? Because there's a lot of great tools out there to help you personalise this in a sort of pseudo way rather than spending hours just crafting one email that you might want to write. 

Then, you meet a client. What do you say to a client when they say to you, “Hey, Christian. We want to work with you but we really need business now. We need some help from you right now because we've got this empty order book and mouths to feed.”

Well, those types of clients I like to try to stay away from. As much as I wish I had a magic wand that was able to win business tomorrow, that's just not the case. There is, obviously, a little bit depending on the deal size that you're chasing. Though, we're typically working with agencies that are working and trying to get six (6) and seven (7) figures opportunities. There's a sale cycle involved.

Even if I was to get the CMO of Coca Cola on the phone tomorrow.You're talking three (3), six (6), nine (9) or maybe more months before they're ready. There's nothing you can really do to speed that process up. Some of the lower ticket items, there's a lower sales cycle involved in that. So, I think you have to go into a long term strategy. To relate it, if you were taking an SEO strategy, you would never engage in an SEO programme and expect the next day that you're going to close the blog. Then, business is just gonna fly in and your Google rankings are going to go to number one. It takes time. 

Now, with that being said, I think compared to other strategies, because outbound is more of a direct response, you can really start generating those meetings, very quickly. But in terms of converting into close business, that's something that's going to take, little bit longer time. We also advise our clients to really think about it.

We think of it almost like a baseball analogy. Try to get the first base first, and that's really the first meeting, that first conversation. Then, you have to go into that with second base in mind. The second base might be a smaller consulting project. Something very easy for them to buy. Don't expect to go from the first meeting to an AOR opportunity right out of the gates. That's probably not going to happen but if you can start with smaller engagements and then build trust along the way that's a really great strategy to speed up that sales cycle to at least get some revenue. Incoming quicker than later. 

We're working a lot of times with our clients and really trying to think about, what? What is that second base offer that you could be putting out there? 

Yeah. That's a great way of looking at it. Sometimes I do an interesting piece of work with my clients where we use the time to calculate conversion to help them work out. How long does it take from a lead coming into their well to actually converting into a client?

When they work that out, most people are really surprised. Like I did it for myself and I worked out that it was about 11 months. That means, if it's 11 months from someone figuring out learning about who I am to buying from me, then what am I doing in that 11 month period to keep nurturing and moving that contact through the buyer's journey? 

Again, I think people live in an immediate world. I kind of laughed when I asked you that question. You answered it like we try to stay away from them because I kind of do as well. Probably quite quickly that they don't have very realistic expectations or they think you have a magic wand to suddenly solve their problem.

I always say to people, If they have that problem, the best thing you can do is reach out to past clients. Reach out to people you've worked with in the past and see if you can re-engage with them because that's probably your best bet to get some business quickly. 

Yes. That's a great point. I think what we are often doing now with some clients, it's still a very much an outbound proactive way to nurture your own network.

What we see, a lot of clients have done a great job building their networks. Let’s say on LinkedIn, they are connected with a lot of great decision makers. What happens with those contacts, right? You might have people that worked at your agency that went client side, you might have junior people that were your day to day that have now been promoted into more senior decision making roles and you have other clients that have moved on to other agencies.

I think with referrals and word of mouth. You're kind of hoping that they come back to you. You can still keep in mind that network of your own. Proactively reach out and try to start conversations with that. You would really be surprised at the movement that has probably happened in your network that most executives are not very good. They're so busy doing client work that they're not nurturing their network. I think if you want to do something quick, I think that's probably the best way.

It's still not gonna probably be tomorrow. However, because they have some level of trust. They like you and they know you already, the sales cycles are truncated compared to a really true cold outreach. 

Yeah. It's interesting that sometimes people are looking for the juicy fruit at the top of the tree for their new clients. But meanwhile, there's some ripe fruit that's fallen on the ground that actually is at their feet that they could be nurturing. LinkedIn is a really great example of that.I think many of us don't do that very well and consistently. 

Let me ask another question, because you might have a different view to me on this one. Sometimes the client says to me, “Rob, we're thinking about hiring a Business Development person in-house.” What do you think? How would you respond to that question if they're, like an SME agency size? 

I think if they are a small agency, it could be a dangerous proposition. If I really think about a small agency size, the principles really need to be in charge of new business. They're going to sell the agency the best. I think we've run into a lot of situations where they kind of go out and they expect this Business Development Director, I call it kind of the one with the magic Rolodex, that supposedly has all these contacts. Rarely, do I see that work out very well? I can't tell you that there's a certain size that I would recommend.

I would say if you're maybe twelve (12) or more people, it might be a good place where you might want to start thinking about a new Business Director. Below that, I think it really needs to be spearheaded by the Agency's Senior Leadership, probably, the Principal. Not to say that they aren't other resources or other outsourced types of companies, that you might want to think about to help at least generate those leads because we understand the principles wearing a lot of different hats.

Prospecting may not be their skill set or  may not even be something they have the time to do. However, at the end of the day, they're going to need to be the ones to kind of real in, nurture that business and close that business. Once you get a little bit bigger, I think you can start thinking about bringing someone else from the outside in to help on a full time basis. What is your perspective on that? 

To be honest and for the listeners, I didn't prompt Christian to say that. By the way, this is really  interesting to hear your perspective. To be quite honest, I've heard more horror stories of people hiring Business Development people who buy their own nature of probably, good salesman when it comes to the recruitment process.

Then, they become a very expensive resource and they don't deliver the results. I often see there becomes a conflict between the Marketing person that they might have and the Business Development person. Because the Business Development blames marketing for not having given them all the tools or the decks that they need.

I say exactly the same thing. Only you are the best person to sell your agency. You can sell it with passion. You can sell it with belief. It's not one of those challenges that you should be outsourcing. My advice to people is to hire Marketing people before you hire Business Development people because you need to have all of the marketing tactics and assets in place to support that. I completely agree with what you said. 

Unfortunately, I've seen more examples of where it hasn't worked. Where it cost the agency six (6) figures to hire and get rid of them then they brought very little in.

Let me just ask you a question, changing tact a bit. How have you seen the business development landscape changed over the last couple of years with Coronavirus, remote working and all that how things changed the way we do? 

I have seen some differences. I think one of the things that is interesting and we'll see how this plays out over time. There was a belief by a lot of companies and agencies that you had to work with someone that's within driving distance basically from where you work. Now with everybody working remotely and improving that model could work in most situations. 

There's just a general sense that it is not as important anymore. If you're really great at something, it doesn't matter if you're one down the block or one thousand miles away. I think it will be interesting to see how that plays out. I think that also lends itself to that specialisation even more because they're willing to seek you out no matter where you're at, versus, maybe they were working with generalist agencies just because they were close to them before. 

That’s one thing that we're certainly seeing now. Again, we'll see how it plays out over time. I think another thing that's been interesting as well is just because at least for what we do, a lot of it is working with agencies to kind of start that top of the funnel build the relationships. There was just so much travel going on before with executives travelling from meeting to meeting. Speaking at conferences, we've actually found it to be easier to get on their calendars now because they're at home more.

It's easier for them to jump on a 30 minute zoom call because they're not on a plane somewhere or they're not meeting with other clients. Again, we'll see, as travel starts to pick up more how that plays out over time as well. Those are a couple different things that we're seeing.

I agree. Personally, my work has changed so much. It must be the case for you as well. Whereas before, I would spend two hours driving into London. Spending a couple of hours with a client. Maybe seeing two clients that day and then heading home. 

Now, I can have a day where I can see six (6) or seven (7) clients. I need to know that I want to do that in one day. It just reminds me of how much more efficient we can be. But as you say, when we're recording this episode, we're just at the point of the world, sort of opening up again. It will be interesting to see where it lands when the pendulum swings back to wherever it's going to swing.

Though, I don't know how it is in the US at the moment, Christian. Over here there's a massive skill shortage. One of the most frequent conversations I'm having with my clients, if it's not around sales, it's around people and recruitment. It's just tough to recruit people at the moment. That’s why hiring remote workers just opens up a whole new opportunity. 

Yes. We're seeing that’s the number one challenge we're actually seeing right now. This huge talent shortage. Here in the US, quite frankly, that 's putting pause on some new business efforts because they can't service the current clients that they have, right now, because they're running out of team members to work on the work.

However, they also see the future that they need new business to keep growing. It's kind of “darned if you do and darned if you-don't” type of situation here. Though, hopefully that changes.

With remote work as well, that's a whole another kind of worm there about agencies. I speak with some that are very traditional and want to go back to the office. Then, once everybody working in the office, others that have decided we want to go fully remote.

I think there's a general sense from a lot of  agency staffers that they would want to work remotely. Then, those companies and agencies that don't do that, I think might be at a disadvantage. Those that do embrace it could get access to talent that they never could have gotten previously because they weren't in that region. It’s  interesting to see how that plays out. 

Yeah. I think people just need to open their eyes to solving the challenge in different ways. I was talking to one of my clients whose SEO agency this morning. They're hiring a lot of people from Eastern Europe now. Since they can pay the same salary as they pay in the UK, they can hire the absolute best people in Eastern Europe. Whereas in the UK, they are hiring kind of started to mid-level people. That's a strategy working well for them. Obviously, they can be based wherever and we have technology like this to communicate more effectively.

Let's just wrap this up. I just want to put you on the spot for a moment to ask, if you were talking to an agency and they're trying to do Business Development themselves, have you got any other tips for them? Besides the things that you've already shared with us today. Any advice to them about Business Development? 

I think there's really three (3) things that are critical. First, like I mentioned earlier, getting really clear on the problems that you solve for clients. 

Second, getting clearer on the type of clients that we call, the right to win, Not to say, “Do you want to win?” but, “Do you have a right to win them?” Really getting clear on the types of companies, the size, the locations and whatever it is, it means for you.

Third, which is often kind of overlooked, if you're really again trying to do a more proactive approach like we've been talking about. These executives are very busy. Think about how you can leverage your thought leadership and your subject matter experts. If you have proprietary research or tools, how do you use that in order to open up a door? 

We talk about leaving a deposit before you make a withdrawal. How do you reach out and offer your prospects something that will help give them value and use that really to start a relationship?I don't like the term lead generation for what we do.

I really think about it more in relationship generation. For me, if you think of it in that regard,more long term, you'll see a lot better success than trying to be really transactional. 

There's a couple of really good quotes I need to steal from you there because I really like that idea of making a deposit before you make a withdrawal. It's so true. It's like value first, right? Lead with value. Deliver something that demonstrates. You know what you're talking about, that actually can help your prospects since they are much more likely to engage with you rather than just thinking of, selling is selling. I've got to sell to them because you're never gonna get anywhere with that.

Let me just ask you the last question. If you could go back in time and give that younger Christian who's just starting out in business a piece of advice, what would it be? 

That's a great question. Funny and interesting enough. Actually, my parents, who are getting older now, we're in town last week and I asked them that same question. What advice would they give themselves?

They turned around and asked me after they answered. I didn't have a ready answer at that time. I had to do some thinking about it. Funny that you ask me this question because I literally just went through this. What I had shared with them and I'll share here today, for me it's really keeping more of an open mind. 

I think when I was younger, I felt maybe I knew everything. I think that maybe I didn't need to have as wide of an experience that I see today. I think that's what I would teach or tell myself.I think there were some opportunities that I just completely overlooked or dismissed because I thought I had it all figured out back then and obviously, I really didn't. That's the advice that I would give but I don't know if I would have listened to myself.

That was going to be my next question. This is a question I started asking everybody, Do you think your younger self would have actually listened to that? But, that was a really good bit of advice.

I was just saying too, Christian, before we went on the show that I'm collating all this feedback into ready for 100 episodes to include all the feedback from all the guests. And almost, I don't think anybody has ever said the same thing. I can gladly confirm that no one has said that before, Christian.

That's really interesting, but a really good bit of advice. Because when we're younger, we can be quite cocky and quite cocksure. Sometimes that kind of youthful, ignorant arrogance serves as well because we just blindly go on and do things. I sometimes think now, being old and grey, that I wouldn't have the courage to do some of the things I did when I was younger. Also, being a bit more open minded and listening to those who have got a bit of grey hair is probably not a bad idea.

Christian, we need to wrap things up now. I really appreciate your time today. If the listeners wanted to find out more about your get in touch, where would they go? 

I think the best place to go would be my website christianbanach.com. From there, we have a free agency growth master class. We could subscribe and get weekly updates on different CMOs that have been recently appointed, so that's a great resource. Obviously, there's links to all the different social channels that I'm on there but I think that my website is really the hub where I think would be the best place to start. 

Good and that's what I tell my clients. Your website should be the central hub of everything. We'll include that link into the show notes so people can find it. I just want to say a big thank you for giving up your time today to join us on The Agency Accelerator Podcast. I know our listeners will have found that really useful because I got a few really great nuggets from it as well. So, Thanks for joining us today. 

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's just a lot of fun.

There you have it. An interesting take on lead generation. I really hope that you get some practical ideas that you can start implementing.

As ever, if you enjoyed the show please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast and also share this with your colleague. Other than that, I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of The Agency Accelerator Podcast.