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Best Practices for Cold Outreach with Ross MacRae
172 Plays16 days ago
Cold outreach is tough, but necessary. Whether you’re in commercial film production or working inside an agency, building relationships with new clients is key to staying in business. To break down what actually works, Ross MacRae, founder of Agency Source and a veteran in lead generation, joins the show for a back-and-forth exchange of cold outreach best practices.
Together, we trade insights on what’s working, what’s not, and what to flat-out avoid. From LinkedIn and email to other methods tailored for creative teams and production companies, this episode offers a sharp, tactical breakdown of real-world outreach strategies. It’s a practical, punchy conversation built from experience, mistakes, and a few strong opinions.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Crossing the Axis' and Hosts
00:00:06
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production with your host, James Keblis.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome listeners and thank you for tuning in to
Importance and Challenges of Cold Outreach
00:00:27
Speaker
the show. Let's be real. Most people hate cold outreach. It's awkward and when done wrong, it feels slimy and like you're shouting into the void.
00:00:35
Speaker
But if you're not consistently generating new leads, your business isn't likely to keep growing. So what do you do? Now let's be clear. The number one way to grow your business isn't cold outreach.
00:00:45
Speaker
It's taking care of the clients you already have. Deepening those relationships, growing accounts, and making sure the people who trust you today keep coming back tomorrow. Your best leads are always the ones already paying you and the people they refer to you.
00:00:59
Speaker
That's where your energy should go first.
Building Client Relationships and Networking
00:01:01
Speaker
And of course, there's relationship-based networking. This is another strong approach, albeit an exhausting one to maintain well. But while doing those things, you also need to be reaching beyond your network, not just through who you know, but through what you do.
00:01:15
Speaker
Because when you lead with your craft, you increase your visibility to potential clients actively looking for your specific expertise. It's an opportunity to clearly demonstrate what sets your company apart.
00:01:25
Speaker
And most importantly, you increase your value when the lead finally turns into a job.
Effective Strategies for Cold Outreach
00:01:30
Speaker
But that path to successful cold outreach is a long game. The lead times easily take six months to a year to turn into a job.
00:01:37
Speaker
And if you wait until things slow down to start prospecting, you're already too late. The problem is most people do cold outreach wrong. They come off as desperate, salesy, or just playing annoying. But lead generation doesn't have to feel like bad sales.
00:01:50
Speaker
When done right, it's about attracting, not chasing. It's about engagement, not extraction. It's about building meaningful connections, showing real interest in a lead success, and providing value before ever asking for a meeting.
00:02:03
Speaker
That's why today I'm talking with Ross McRae to help us navigate best practices of cold outreach. Ross has spent decades in lead generation studying what works and what doesn't.
Insights from Ross McRae on Lead Generation
00:02:13
Speaker
His point of view comes from seeing customers on his widely used outreach platform in the UK and Europe called Bikini List and its US counterpart, AgencySource.
00:02:22
Speaker
Together, we're trading ideas in kind of a back and forth way on what actually works in cold outreach and lead generation. He brings an idea, I bring one, we challenge each other, dig deeper, compare notes on what works.
00:02:32
Speaker
So let's get into it. Ross McRae, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. You're a legend in this business and cold outreach. You actually have the platform for it. ah Yeah, well, I don't know that I'm a legend, but I've certainly got a platform for it.
00:02:46
Speaker
Well, speaking of the platform, let's talk about what you've built with Bikini List and Agency
Platforms for Outreach: Bikini List and AgencySource
00:02:51
Speaker
Source. I've actually used your platforms a number of times and... I mean, basically I do it to get leads on who to talk to at agencies. If you're looking for agency work and who to talk to at brands, at brand work, you get their contact information, you get their direct hits to LinkedIn, you get their email addresses, ah and then you can reach out and you actually have the tools to actually do the outreach too. If you just want to follow through on that, is there more to it than I don't use?
Sales and Marketing in Lead Generation
00:03:16
Speaker
No, that's pretty much a ah good summation of of of what the platform is. Yep. And how long has BikiniList been going now? About 30 years. And how long has Agency Source been happening in the US? About five years.
00:03:27
Speaker
And and that that is our brand in the in the in the States. I always feel kind of bad when I'm using it a little bit, like I'm doing something wrong. Like I'm getting information I'm not supposed to have. It's great that yeah you can see a value there. That's the point.
00:03:41
Speaker
I want to frame this up a little bit because I'm curious on your point of view, do you consider this work of lead generation and this kind of cold outreach sales or marketing? It's both. And it would be very difficult to to put either marketing or sales one in front of the other. I think it's both.
00:03:57
Speaker
I always think of sales as being what happens when you're in a conversation with somebody that involves a trade of services and cash and marketing is the point up to that.
00:04:10
Speaker
I view it pretty strongly as marketing. Sales happens when a conversation started and everything before that is marketing. Like, you know, oftentimes you'll see a company, you know, they'll meet somebody and they'll do a capabilities deck, you know, this is what we do and all this stuff. That's your marketing. That should be done in advance. That's the idea that I have for kind of cold outreaches. Your capabilities are already out there publicly. So when someone sees that and they want to to know more about that, then they're calling you and they already have an understanding of your capabilities and you can just start diving into the transaction.
00:04:38
Speaker
So yes, it so I, you've changed my opinion it is marketing. but You think Mark? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that there we go. We're having this, we're going back and forth. Yeah. And then in terms of framing the problem, and there's obvious things that why this is important, of course, like, you know, growth and and sales takes
Brand Recognition through Consistent Outreach
00:04:55
Speaker
a long time. So are there any other things that come to mind for you about framing this up as a problem?
00:05:01
Speaker
ah Well, I think it's very important for awareness. It's very important for brand recognition. It's very important for making sure that you're in front of people when they're ready and need your services.
00:05:12
Speaker
But I think that that sometimes consistent cold outreach, as long as it's done properly, is a bit like somebody walking past a car showroom every day. But on the day they need to buy one, they'll go in and see. And I think that's exactly how I i view it.
Diversifying Client Base for Stability
00:05:28
Speaker
and And for practical things that come to mind for me is it avoids client concentration. I know so many production companies who get the majority of their billings through one client or two clients. And it's going well, but it's just so precarious like that. And by doing this kind of cold outreach and marketing and lead generation, you're really battling to overcome that, which I think is really important.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yes. And there's a tendency as well to overwork those people who are showing interest in you. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you keep filling the pipeline at the top or the funnel at the top, then you by definition cannot spend as much time as the people who are bit midway down the funnel.
00:06:10
Speaker
Therefore, that's healthy as well. Yeah. You're not overworking the warm leads, the hot leads or the current clients.
Refining Outreach and Value Propositions
00:06:17
Speaker
And I always say to people who are ah embarking on this is if you keep filling the top of the funnel, you'll be surprised how many people suddenly pop out that you spoke to a year ago, six months ago, three months ago, who suddenly are now ready to start the transaction.
00:06:32
Speaker
Whereas if you'd chased them and chased them and chased them and they'd gone nowhere, then you've wasted your cold outreach opportunity. Oh, that's a good one. A couple others that came to mind for me for one is that by doing marketing, it's a force function to practice expressing your value proposition.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's hard to do. It's really hard work and it evolves and it evolves with the work that you do and the kind of product that you make for your clients. And talking about that in a way gets you sharper the knowing what you do, knowing your specialization, knowing the kind of clients, like the actual practice of putting yourself out there and marketing in a very intentional way is just good muscle exercise.
00:07:11
Speaker
So, and and also what it encourages you you to do is to get three versions of that message. One that's very short, let's call it the elevator pitch, where you're using cold outreach techniques that you can only do ah very short message, right? So you have to hone that.
00:07:27
Speaker
One, medium length one, which is Again, you might choose to call it, I don't know, the hotel lobby pitch where you've got a little bit more time and you need to frame all that information that you've just discussed about your offering and and get that into shape and equally have one which is more long form where you can go into a bit more depth.
00:07:46
Speaker
And each of those is just as valuable as the other, I think. and And making sure when you're in the elevator, you're in the elevator with the right people in the lobby with the right people. actually yeah Understanding your market. The other one is, this is a little bit more indirectly benefiting, i think, but the better you are at practicing your own marketing, the better you will be at understanding how to help your clients.
00:08:10
Speaker
Marketing is hard and doing it on yourself and doing it on your own company requires a skill and understanding of marketing practices and sales practices that I believe transfer over into the kind of work you make for our clients, whether you're making it for agencies or direct to brands. It's still a really, really healthy way to stay sharp.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah, it should transfer. That's the whole point, because the the challenges are the same. Your clients challenges should be the same as yours. If they're not, and you then you might not be doing what you need to do.
00:08:40
Speaker
what you're what you're telling your client to do, you know? Exactly. Which I've always ah i've always found odd in the in the advertising world. I know that I do quite a bit of marketing, quite a bit of lead generation, quite a bit of outreach. And the efforts that I make and what I see work and don't work, I absolutely put into prescriptions for my clients because I've understood it more.
Client Categorization and Tailored Approaches
00:09:00
Speaker
and Or I warn them or I see the path of success in a certain way. And I'm not sure if i would know those things if I had not been practicing them.
00:09:08
Speaker
I have a friend who uses the phrase ah blinding flash of the obvious. I'll name check him. He's called Mark Grant. And he he told me that 15 years ago. i tell everybody when I have a blinding flash of the obvious, I tell all my clients, I tell all my team, anyone who will listen. Because if it's a blinding flash of the obvious for me, it's going to be a blinding flash of the obvious for other business owners.
00:09:29
Speaker
Okay, I think this frames it up pretty well. Ross, is there anything else I'm missing? You ready to dive into some best practices? Let's go. Okay, well, you start out. What's ah what's on your list? Okay, number one, silo your prospects into accounts, dream clients, and marketing addressable clients.
00:09:47
Speaker
Okay, so this is like lead scoring of some way? Yes. So key accounts would be those five, 10 or 15 agencies or brands that you really want to work with and that you will do everything in your power to make sure that you get a project from.
00:10:04
Speaker
They will be approached completely differently to anybody else. Then we've got our dream clients, which are people who are tier two, let's call them, people that you really want to work with, but they're not your key accounts.
00:10:19
Speaker
So they would be approached in a tier two way. And then thirdly, i would have marketing addressable prospects. So these are people who are definitely in your market. You definitely have an offer that they would be interested in, but they're not your dream clients and they're not your key accounts.
00:10:35
Speaker
And they can be treated in ah in a third way. Well, I think that's interesting. i do a form of lead scoring too. have a very simple methodology for it. High, medium,
Strategic Planning for Key Accounts
00:10:45
Speaker
and low. a high lead score is someone that has need, budget, and experience. All three of those things.
00:10:51
Speaker
A medium lead score is somebody that has two of those things. And a low lead score is somebody that one of those things. And you're always trying to figure out what that is. So there's a version of that. That's interesting. So rather than my tier, which is how valuable these prospect leads are to me, what you're doing there, James, is saying it's not about you. It's about them. Are they ready to work with you? That's interesting.
00:11:16
Speaker
So that's how that's how I look at it. Give me an example and your tiered approach on how the outreach would be different. Take those 10 or 15 key accounts or the ones that you really want and work out the best way to approach them individually. Spend a lot of time thinking about how you're going to do that. Research them really well. Look at the work that they're producing.
00:11:38
Speaker
Obviously, find out who the key contacts are within within the organization, whether it's a brand or an agency. and come up with a tailored approach to them that is not going to take an hour for you to think up. It's going to take a week for you to think up. And then say to yourself, okay, within the next 12 months, we will have approached this client and hopefully be further down the transaction than we were or are now. And they would never be included in any of the tier two or tier three techniques.
00:12:07
Speaker
So they would be siloed off and they would be dealt with probably by the CEO or the managing director and the team. But the whole company should be behind getting a conversation going with these clients.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, I think for those two like the tier one and tier two that you're talking about, you need to think like a strategist. Yeah, you need to think like not a salesperson, but a strategist on what they're what you see that they might be missing or a market opportunity or something that benefits them and gets them closer to what they're trying to do approach with that.
00:12:39
Speaker
Yeah. And even down to the point of if you if you're using an email marketing platform, put their domain in your never mails or whatever it is that you you have so that nobody in your team can email out by accident and overzealous rep, you know, that and protect them that much. You know, and that that that's what I always say.
00:12:56
Speaker
So a tiered approach and putting people in categories and spending different kind of energy on different folks. Should we move on to another one? You ready for what I got here? Yeah, go.
Engaging and Supporting Junior Advocates
00:13:06
Speaker
Okay, so here's what I'm thinking for my first one.
00:13:08
Speaker
ah Don't only target the top chief XO levels. If you're targeting the top and you don't know them already, then you're probably not going to get their attention. They're being solicited so much and they have a established relationships. And the chances of you getting into them to have them see your work and engage a conversation and do that is probably pretty low.
00:13:32
Speaker
So one approach that I advise is start with juniors. On LinkedIn, for instance, which is a great platform, this, you can find companies and get notifications when someone who's hired with a particular title, like producer, for instance, which is a very good one. But you you find these juniors who are just getting hired and starting out their careers and you engage them and get them trained on your approach and your methodology and your company, asking them questions, learning what's going on, they're much more likely to respond. They're much more likely to take in information. And the best part is they're probably going to be in the room at some point with the CXO, with the marketing people, with the creatives, with the other head of producers. And when they're getting ready to do a campaign,
00:14:14
Speaker
they're going to say, you know, I just met this company. and We might want to bring them into the conversation. And then they get, so yeah, bring them in, let's find out what's going on. So you have them carry your water versus trying to start at the top and make an inroad that way.
00:14:26
Speaker
Yeah, excellent. Because that means they look great if it works. So having built that relationship, which I think is a great idea, you you then need to make sure that when they do introduce you, you've got to have their back so they get the success, they get the recognition as being the person that brought you in and and you've done a dynamite job. but And you also want to name check them as much as possible during that process so that they do get the kudos.
00:14:50
Speaker
That's exactly right. And that leans into what we were talking about earlier, you know, thinking of the client as the person and kind of going in that way. So I absolutely agree
Crafting Effective Cold Emails
00:14:57
Speaker
with that. Think of the client as a person. So, you know, congratulate them, offer insights, train them up, have them carry your message internally. And I found it to be very successful. And it's long term planning. It's like planting a seed, isn't it?
00:15:07
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. And you can do it with many at one time. So it's I think it's a good approach. And it could be that if you're communicating with the more junior person, they're going to be around in the company they're in or other companies for longer in their career than maybe the people who are higher up the food chain. So that really is a long term relationship.
00:15:26
Speaker
So absolutely worth the time investment. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. You're up. What you got? Cold emails work as long as you do your homework and have a relevant call to action.
00:15:36
Speaker
Okay. Explain. I hear and read it a lot. Cold emails don't work, right? Well, they absolutely do. But only if you've done your homework and therefore got your message relevant.
00:15:47
Speaker
And you've thought about what you want the person, the recipient to do when they get your email. And that is when you talk about hard work. That is where the hard work is. and And again, you treat your different silos or tiers of people who you're going to cold email in a different way. And you have to craft a message for your individual outreach, which is going to be very different to the tier two outreach, which is going to go to maybe 60 or 100 people.
00:16:12
Speaker
and your tier three, which is gonna go to 1500 people, but you if you're gonna use email to approach them as part of all the other approaches you're about to make, then you need to make sure that your subject line works, that your you engage with them in the first few sentences And the call to action is not too far down the email that they don't read it because they've run out of steam or they're just bored.
00:16:36
Speaker
And this is the key. The call to action is not a call to action. If the recipient doesn't get that far, you might as well not put it in. Give me an example of a subject line that you've seen work or the opening line that you've seen work.
00:16:48
Speaker
So one of the ones that we know works really well is kind of counterintuitive, which is just high first name and leaving that blank. Now, we've we've done many, many reports on this, and it does seem to be the most effective way of getting an open.
00:17:03
Speaker
Whether it's the most effective way of engaging, I'm not so sure. So what we what I tend to do these days, and one approach that you might find works for other people is start with high first name, but then back it up with a sentence, a short phrase that addresses a pain point they may have.
00:17:19
Speaker
And you should know what their pain pain points might be because that's your homework. So it could be something like, hi, James, I'd love your feedback on our platform or something similar.
00:17:30
Speaker
Something that talks about them, puts them on ah what I call a pedestal. And that works really well. We've also heard lots of things about as soon as I see an email with my my name in it, I know it's ah a bot. I know it's a templated AI generated email.
00:17:45
Speaker
So we have tried other subject lines without putting people's name in. OK, still perform well. but But again, they perform well when you address a pain point, but also make it about them.
00:17:59
Speaker
Always talk about the recipient and not yourself. So you put their name in the subject line, Hi Jim, in the subject line. Yes. If you're sending out to your key accounts, your top 10 or 15, you're going to do that anyway.
00:18:13
Speaker
If you're doing an email marketing campaign and you make sure that your subject line isn't generic and it isn't AI generated, then using their first name, we find the stats tell us gets more open rates.
00:18:27
Speaker
You can't engage with the body of your message with your recipient if they don't open it. So you have to make sure that your subject line does it for you. And the classic visit our new website, it's now live, is not going to do it.
00:18:40
Speaker
and know You might as well not send it. I still get emails like that all the time. I still get emails that talk about the sender and not the recipient. And I just shake my head. We know from our stats that those emails don't work.
00:18:54
Speaker
People still send them even through our platform. And we know that those don't get engagement. It's not about you. It's about them. Always, always. I agree with that. Any things in the body, in the message, that like that opening line that just, have you seen something that has been consistently effective?
00:19:10
Speaker
Things that make you part of the gang of the recipient company. So for example, if you were sending to an agency and you're a production company and you're sending to an agency that just won an account yeah and you had experience in that um industry, say automotive, to make it easy, then you could name check the fact that you've done work for other agencies like them.
00:19:34
Speaker
That would be a a great example. What I would be communicating is we've worked with an agency like you on a brand like the one you've just won. So you might say last year's campaign for Toyota Versace, you know, not Versace, Forsace.
00:19:49
Speaker
for Right. So the hard work is condensing that into a subject line that fits or meets all those criteria. It makes you part of the gang and it talks about them, which is very difficult.
00:20:02
Speaker
But that's that's the challenge. What do you think success is from those emails? I think too often people think they'll send an email and they'll get a job or, the you know.
Gauging Success and Using Engagement Metrics
00:20:11
Speaker
Or they'll send an email and they'll even get a conversation.
00:20:14
Speaker
I think having them click on something just to pay attention to you is success. If they actually want a conversation, that's monumental success. yeah That's the most you can expect from those. What you're after is engagement.
00:20:26
Speaker
So there is an an email that is a personal approach. I call it a personal email. where you're it's going to be you know 30 or 40 words maximum and what you're doing is you you're you're looking for engagement so that's where the call to action comes in what is it that you want to achieve with that email do you want them to go to your site if you do then put a link into your site more examples here or or check out the work here okay and then obviously track that so you need to be making sure that you can track it either on the email template itself if you're doing a templated email or on the landing page that you're sending them to. So make sure that's all set up before you send your email out, even if it's just a URL that says something like www.mysite.com forward slash client, right?
00:21:08
Speaker
Make sure that when that's set up, you can check your analytics platform to find out if the person you sent it to landed on that page. And you could even, if you've got the ability, you could make a landing page yeah URL for those 20 key accounts. I would.
00:21:25
Speaker
You just took my next one. Actually, this right this is. this I was going to go right into that. That is exactly the thing to do. yeah It's a lot of work. It's not easy.
Enhancing Engagement with Personalization
00:21:34
Speaker
But if you're talking like, you know, for your point of these, whatever, the top tier accounts, it's absolutely worth doing this. And that is to create a landing page on your website specifically for them.
00:21:45
Speaker
You put yeah URL trackers in and your CRM or anything else should be able to do that for you. and you engage them and you say, I noticed something about you that made us think about this.
00:21:58
Speaker
And we actually put together a little landing page for you if you want to check it out. Here's the link. If it resonates, follow up. Thank you very much for your time. Absolutely. And that's what I call a pedestal email.
00:22:10
Speaker
That's the phrase ah that I've used recently. Put them on the pedestal. What you've just said there is doing exactly that. It's saying you're important enough to us for us to have done a little bit of homework and we'd love to know what you think about that. We'd love your feedback on that.
00:22:25
Speaker
You're not saying we'd love to work with you. You're not saying we we are absolutely the right people for you and there's no one else that can do this work for you. what you're asking is to get some feedback. And as long as you know that they've taken that step and either hit reply, which is dynamite, or they've gone and followed your link, then you can move on to your next stage, whatever that strategy is, to to move the conversation further, which might just be LinkedIn.
00:22:48
Speaker
It certainly won't be a follow-up email. It needs to be something else.
LinkedIn as a Networking Tool
00:22:51
Speaker
So this is the other mistake is that people who get that far tend to think, so we've just sent out a templated email to our tier three and this person has clicked it because I can tell from my analytics, they've been at the website. I'm now going to email them again to say, hopefully they would never say, hey, I know you clicked on our website, but you but you'd be surprised.
00:23:10
Speaker
But, you know, to say, hey, it's me. I'd love to arrange a call or a demo. That's not what you do next. LinkedIn is great for the next step. But yeah, landing pages.
00:23:21
Speaker
Landing pages that are very, very specific to either small groups of people or sometimes individuals, you know, great idea. I think landing pages is ace work. I mean, that is really next level work. And on that landing page, you might have something like a case study that's similar, something you did for ah a similar client that worked really well. and But you want to explain it. should be personalized for them.
00:23:44
Speaker
You know, like, hey, here's here's what we saw with you. We did this project. And a really good tool for doing that. And I've seen this work. I do it myself. Yeah. you there's a tool called loom and loom is a screen video grabber that keeps your you know you have that little circle with your head there and you you spend a couple minutes walking the client through the landing page you know and what you're thinking if you don't want to write it down or in addition to writing it down you have this kind of one minute two minute tutorial so that they can see what's going on they get to hear from you i mean that's huge and it's very low risk for them
00:24:19
Speaker
They're not committing to meeting you. They're not committing to a meeting. They're not wasted their time. They're going to click on this. They land on it. If you did it right, they're going to follow up with you and ask to to learn more.
00:24:29
Speaker
But to really have it be personalized and really specific to understanding a potential opportunity, a potential need, a challenge, whatever it might be. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you talked about LinkedIn as another place. If you don't want to do the landing page, I do think LinkedIn is a really good place to send people to. If you've done content, you've made a post, you've written an article, you've done something that you believe would resonate with them, then I think that's a good alternative. It's not as good of an alternative, but it's better than most other things that you could do in the email in my mind. what do you think?
00:25:01
Speaker
That's one of my next points, actually. Very good. Oh, go for it. So connect with a target group of prospects who are similar on LinkedIn. For example, 20 CMOs at food brands. That's just an example.
00:25:15
Speaker
And then send out connection requests. Don't send a message with your connection request. just send the connection request without a note and that's just really easy because you get ah offered the opportunity to do that when you when you make a connection on linkedin it says send without a note just say yes very important because i know for a fact of many years of doing this that you get more connections if you don't send a note than if you do because if you send a note you have to be selling and you don't want to be selling so just hit connect yeah i by the way i've seen that data too and you're you're absolutely right it without a note performs better
00:25:47
Speaker
Yeah, without doubt. So as I said, so 20 CMOs say, ah wait till a good number of them have have accepted your connection. In other words, 10 maybe. That might take a week. It might take two weeks.
00:25:59
Speaker
But then once a good number of of them have done that, post content for that little group and That is a great way to use LinkedIn to follow up with what you may have sent out in and an email.
00:26:12
Speaker
And again, it's not quick, but it's effective. Let me see if I understand the cadence that you're talking about here. Are you suggesting connecting on LinkedIn first, then sending an email or the other way around?
00:26:23
Speaker
I'm saying the other way around. Send an email first and then after ah a week or two days or whatever it is, if you've not had a response, then start the ah process on LinkedIn that I've just described with that small group of target people. And the reason I say that is because, first of all, I know that works.
00:26:42
Speaker
And secondly, because keeping your response to the LinkedIn request in your back pocket after you've done the email, gives you another opportunity to touch that prospect.
00:26:54
Speaker
And if the current thinking is you need to do that 14 times, then keep it in your back pocket for when you need it, when you're further down the transaction or or further down the process of getting to the transaction,
00:27:07
Speaker
you might need that ability to say thank you for the connection, for example. You might need that once you're further down the process and you're not getting any response later on in the process, if that makes sense.
00:27:19
Speaker
I like that. And I'm curious, so how effective do you think LinkedIn is for doing kind of cold outreach? Very effective, very effective. as As part of email, a personal email, an email campaign, LinkedIn, I would say, is just as valuable, especially if you're approaching brands.
00:27:38
Speaker
People agencies are used to getting emails from people as part of their job. In other words, an art buyer or a TV producer needs to be aware of what's what's going on, what's available to them should a project come in.
00:27:49
Speaker
But brand managers and Marketing managers and producers of brands are not in the same industry. So this is where LinkedIn really comes into its own because a polite approach on on LinkedIn is the correct approach for going direct to brands, in my opinion.
00:28:05
Speaker
And again, having having done this for many years, the stats kind of back it up. I have that same experience. LinkedIn is a very valuable part of my marketing and sales work. I get a lot of business as a result of being active on LinkedIn. And one of the things that I've noticed is it's really evolved from being a place where you used to put your resume and then it just sat there to a legitimate social media platform about business and money.
00:28:31
Speaker
And I actually find it to be extraordinarily liberating that you can, that there's now a place to talk about business, to talk about money and everyone's there for the same agenda and there's nothing to hide. There's nothing to be coy about.
00:28:44
Speaker
It's transparent. We're here to do business. We're presenting ourselves or, and, LinkedIn is is becoming this. It's not all the way there yet. So sometimes I'm finding like there's a lot of people that LinkedIn, they're using it as a social media platform for business.
00:28:58
Speaker
But then there's a lot of people just just now kind of arriving to that realization that this is the kind of platform for that. So it's it's still developing in my mind. I think it's still young as a social media platform, even though it's been around for a long time.
00:29:11
Speaker
I agree with that. And the only thing I would say is as long as you're polite and it isn't a selling platform, it's a transactional platform about ideas and capabilities, maybe.
00:29:21
Speaker
Maybe that's what it is. In other words, corporate network building as opposed to social network building, actually, probably. And I think the advertising production world have been reticent to get involved in LinkedIn to the degree that they should because they see it as an uncool corporate and or did see it as an uncool corporate network, which of course is exactly what it is.
00:29:43
Speaker
It's not uncool, but it is a corporate network. Yeah, right. It's not it's not Instagram. You know, it's it's a place to put yourself out there. It's a place to discover others. And it's also a hot mess in a lot of ways, too.
00:29:55
Speaker
And but one of the ways that you can overcome that is by following people who you really do care about. engaging people who you really do care about. And by the way, the more you post on LinkedIn, the more you like on LinkedIn, the more you comment on LinkedIn, the more visibility your you get on LinkedIn. It's all tied together, so you have to kind of be active on it. But I always tell people, imagine going to conference that has people that you actually care about, who you want to share with and learn from and and network with. You can curate LinkedIn and your feed there to be that by following people and engaging with people. LinkedIn starts to figure it out and starts bringing you more people that you would like. And you can get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee and look at LinkedIn and actually find it quite engaging and inspiring and and a place where you want to share. But it takes a while for that to develop.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah. some Something I came across this week, which I didn't know existed, and it might be a quite new thing, is testimonial Tuesdays on LinkedIn. Have you heard of that? it says It's a hashtag, a LinkedIn hashtag.
00:30:55
Speaker
No, I have no idea what this is. Yeah. So we got a really good testimonial from one one of the production reps. I was thinking, how do you put a testimonial up? Because you can't just post your testimonial and say, hey, aren't we great? We got this testimonial. And so I started looking for other testimonials on LinkedIn and found this testimonial Tuesday.
00:31:14
Speaker
So guess what? From now on, we'll be doing a testimonial every Tuesday. Find somebody to vouch for you. Yeah. And because of the way LinkedIn is, you can have the testimonial made up as a graphic rather than just plain text.
00:31:26
Speaker
And Testimonial Tuesday, that idea, that's what people are doing, gives you good reason not to worry that you're blowing your own trumpet because that's what everyone's doing. And it's a jokey thing, you know.
00:31:38
Speaker
We talk about a sales method. I mean, that's an idea right there is get testimonials from your clients. There is probably nothing more powerful than a testimonial on your website or in your materials on your website, ideally, that just backs up your claim.
00:31:55
Speaker
You say something, you then show the work and have what you did in that work, your claim, and then you got a testimonial that says, yep, that right there. These guys are good at it. That is so powerful. Yeah. Yeah.
00:32:05
Speaker
So where are we? Is it your turn? My turn? I'm kind of lost where we are. um I've kind of run out because we've covered everything I've got. So it's over to
Tailoring Outreach with CRM Systems
00:32:12
Speaker
you. All right. In terms of the strategy, there's a thing that I want clients to do when they're thinking about the engagement, when they're thinking whether it's email or LinkedIn or they're doing content, any of these things that you talked about, one simple thing that they could do to help them get in the mindset for that is in their CRM ah that they're using. If they're not using a CRM, um they need to be. And if they're using Google Workspace, they should be using Copper. It's the easiest one. and But that's another story. Whatever platform you're using,
00:32:38
Speaker
ah You need to um have on there in that card that you're moving somebody along a custom field that says what value or insight would make a meeting worthwhile for them and answer that on the card and have the entire team that you're working with understand that contribute to making that have that answered. And then that's how you're approaching the client. It forces you to think about who they are, what they need, what they're working in.
00:33:05
Speaker
how you might help and get that down to a succinct way. It's a North star for that engagement of that client. That's a great idea. And I'll be implementing that tomorrow. Have it on the card.
00:33:15
Speaker
That's a great idea. So what value or insight would make a meeting worthwhile for them on the engagement, right? Cards, these are people you don't know, but if there's someone you do know and they're more into the development stage, you've already vetted them, they're good, but you haven't quite found the right timing yet.
00:33:31
Speaker
On those cards, do you want to say, how will hiring you move their goals forward, which requires you to really understand their goals. You can't know that before you meet them, but after you meet them, you certainly can.
00:33:41
Speaker
Yeah, and that's a great idea. Another blinding flash to the obvious. i All of this is, all of this is.
Sales Strategy and Team Collaboration
00:33:48
Speaker
and And I think the key, the other key to it is, but the second part of what you just said there, James, was make sure your team understand it and work towards it.
00:33:56
Speaker
Because that's the point. We do this thing, which I do every year in August called Get Set for September, because we know that things kick off again in September. So that mantra is not about it is about what we do internally. Getting set for September is very, very important to us. But what we need to communicate to our prospect prospective clients, people that we're going to work with in the future is we want to help them to get set for September because half the business of this industry is done in that last period of the year between start September and December, right? Middle of December.
00:34:29
Speaker
So the idea of of having this mantra that is both for working internally, your mindset for how you work together as a team, as a company, and also how you then project that for your clients.
00:34:42
Speaker
In other words, coming right back to what you said right at the start about doing what you would do for your clients to help you, that get set for September mantra is what your team need to understand is the objective of the business.
00:34:54
Speaker
I actually think that's a fantastic addition to this list because doing sales alone is a losing game. It's so hard. Also, sales done right with engagement and value and proposition and really understanding that is a collective mindset.
00:35:10
Speaker
Everyone's seeing sales. something from a different perspective, bringing it to the table, sharpening ideas, making them better, challenging each other together about what your company and your agency can bring to the table together. That is such a superior way. I've seen so many production companies that have, they hire, you know, a salesperson, it's based on Rolodex and they haven't gotten the field and they expect something. And it's so rare that it works, that it's just, we need to stop doing it.
00:35:37
Speaker
You bring people in, you work as a team and you also I get people off. I don't know. I'm not a big fan of incentive based pay on the outcomes. You know, get a commission of sales. I think it incentivizes the wrong things and in fact incentivizes bad practices and the slimy business and all that kind of stuff.
00:35:55
Speaker
Whereas if you incentivize the inputs instead of the outputs, good habits, regular reoccurring bias for action kind of work, it automatically produces better outcomes just because the input is so much better. But that requires once again, working as a team.
00:36:10
Speaker
Acknowledging that sales is a group effort and being really deliberate about that and incentivizing the action in those early engagement stages produces the best outcomes. Yeah, I totally agree. Everybody in your business is involved in sales, everyone.
00:36:24
Speaker
And sometimes the people who are not doing sales day in, day out are the ones that can provide the best insight and ideas as to how you might improve what you're doing for sales and that's something i've always tried to encourage in our team everyone's voice is heard i 100 agree with this you know the other thing is on this kind of collaborative sales approach is your product as an agency a production company is the work you deliver for a client and that is that when you're going to market your product
00:36:57
Speaker
that work out to the world, that's what you're sharing. You're talking about your work. You're talking about how you did the work. You're talking about why your work is better, what's unique about it, how it stands apart, all those things. And the people that really understand what happened in the making and the delivery of that work are the producers. Oftentimes they provide incredible insights to sales and marketing for cold outreach that no one else would have thought of. they're you know Everyone's kind of grasping at straws and thinking and thinking, and they're not looking back at the work that you did and seeing how that can you know really insightfully and deeply looking at that work and seeing how that might project to to a potential new client. The producers are extraordinarily good at that.
00:37:35
Speaker
So you want to have them part of that conversation as well. It's definitely a full team effort. And it can be positive in insight and negative insight. And quite often the negative insight is more valuable.
00:37:46
Speaker
i always remember ah finance manager who obviously isn't directly involved in sales, although as I say, everyone in our business and everyone's business should be directly involved in sales. She once said of a transaction that we did with a customer, you might as well have thrown the money out of the window because there was no margin.
00:38:03
Speaker
oh And I just thought that insight was as valuable as saying, why don't we approach this in a completely different way and do something that's never been done before? Because it it just it just focused to everyone's attention on, actually, that's the good point. Why are we so pleased to have this project when we're not making any money on it?
00:38:22
Speaker
That's such good insight. yeah yeah Sales is collaborative. Everybody in the company is involved. Exactly. 100%. It's so, so important. This is a good list, but I'm going to say one final thought.
Face-to-Face Networking and Event Engagement
00:38:33
Speaker
Okay. And that is get out in the field. Do things. Do not sit at your desk. Do not stay in the studio. Get out into the world. Go to events. Host events. Throw parties.
00:38:46
Speaker
Do sales trips. Be in the field. You cannot catch fish unless you're on the water. You have to. to be out there. And I don't mean LinkedIn. I don't mean email. I mean physically in the world, rubbing elbows, just being in it. That work alone by far is the number one way that I've seen people get work. All my clients, it's what I do. It's just being out there.
00:39:10
Speaker
Go to Las Vegas for conferences, trade shows where your clients are showing up, presenting. Immerse yourself in their world. I promise you something will come from it and you can reach out to them in advance. and You can say, hey, I'm going to be in Vegas for, you know, reconnect. Do you want to, if you're going to be there, let's meet up. Now you have a reason to engage people, host a party while you're there, go to a town and do three days of sales outreach, even if they don't have time to meet with you or they're not around they're talking you're going back and forth they appreciate you're going to buy them dinner whatever it might be ask people out go meet them do do do do do get in the field well we don't do enough of that and that's something i'm going to have to put right because since uh covid it's very easy to slip into a comfort zone of thinking that you don't have to do all that and i think we are probably guilty of that here um and then we're going to change that good idea james
00:40:02
Speaker
Ross, this has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for sharing your insights. If people want to learn more about AgencySource, what should they do? Just go to agencysource.tv and book yourself a free demo.
00:40:14
Speaker
Right on. And any final words, anything we missed, anything that you think that they need to be parted with? I hope people don't think that I think I know the answer to everything. All I can do really is just convey what I know has worked for us and what has worked for our clients.
00:40:30
Speaker
I think if you get in repeat business, as you said, right at the start of this ah episode, that's the best testimonial. And I think you could ask those people, if they're giving you repeat business, they'll give you a testimonial for Testimonial or Tuesday, without doubt.
00:40:43
Speaker
Ross, thank you so much for being on the show. Pleasure. Let's do it again.
00:40:48
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S e b l a s dot com