my revenue was vanishing 🛝

You join me after a long newsletter hiatus. I got married (yay 🎉 ) and went on my honeymoon. While I was on the plane home I got inspired to keep writing this newsletter again.

I’m not promising to publish something weekly or daily. It will be as and when I have something interesting to share.

Putting that pressure on having to write something for a specific time each week or month can be a real Debbie downer on creativity.

Lots happened since I last emailed you. Here’s a summary of what to expect in this email:

• how I achieved a stellar month for my agency ($71K in revenue)

• step by step what I did to improve our sales

• the changes I am making to that agency

• People and Planet (a new project)

📗 Publishing Push

It’s been tough. Revenue had been sliding for months. Target after target missed. My number one goal when I got back to work after the wedding was to fix this issue.

I just got the numbers back for October and it was our best month all year! And in fact our best month ever. We managed $71K/m USD in revenue. This is a huge milestone for us.

But how did I turn things around?

I focused exclusively on sales and here is exactly what I did.

📞 Time on the phone

One of the big issues I picked up on right away was the amount of time the team was spending on the phone. It had dropped in a huge way. We’re talking less than 30 mins a day.

I set a clear goal. You need a minimum of 1 hour talking on the phone. Not leaving voicemails, not making calls. Time logged talking to customers. This was a minimum.

The results of course speak for themselves. A lot of people worry that chasing up with people will annoy them. Wrong. People are busy. Really busy. They are bombarded by emails and texts. You have to remind them you’re there. Nine times out of ten people will thank you for it.

🥇 Lead quality

I had an agency running my Google Ads which has long since been the main source of leads. After digging into their strategy I realised they had been optimising for volume too much. They had strayed away from our originally agreed path of quality over quantity.

Therefore I stepped in and readjusted our budgets, keywords, ad sets and everything to do with out Google Ads strategy.

The result was lower volume but much higher quality.

🎨 Ad Creative

Talking about leads we have also been testing Facebook Ads. The most time consuming part was advertising creative. Making all the images for the ads and coming up with descriptions and titles. Thats what always put me off.

Then I came across

💬 How we talk to customers

Selling is all about active listening. Making sure you take in what the person is saying. They will tell you how you can help them. And if you’re not sure then ask more questions.

I hosted training with my sales team to get them to ask more questions. Diving deep into the prospect’s motivations. Often I would ask them why does this person want to publish their book? If they couldn’t tell me concisely in 1 line they didn’t understand the prospect well enough.

 🧑‍🏫 Education

Education decays. It was clear that some knowledge had been lost or confusion had arisen as processes had evolved over time. I took time to recreate training manuals and processes.

We also had meetings where I went back over areas of confusion. Making sure all team members could communicate answers to commonly asked questions in just 1 line.

Everything flowed back to keep it simple.

🤝 Negotiation

Deals take time. Especially high-value deals. The team would often get frustrated with slow deals. “I don’t think this guy is serious” - often wrong. What you need to pay attention to is commitment.

Naturally, the more time or money we invest in something the more committed to it we become. So if someone keeps asking questions, sending detailed emails, and making phone calls they are interested.

And the more time they invest the more likely they are to go ahead. It also means if they then ask for a discount when its time to pay you have more leverage. They are so invested by this point they are unlikely to back out now.

I spent a lot of time teaching my team about these elements of a sales negotiation.

😰 Being vulnerable

My approach had always been to handle problems in the business myself. Shelter the team. I don’t want them to worry. Then I watched a video by James Sinclair ($30 million company portfolio) and he said do the opposite. He is ultra-transparent with staff about the health of the business.

Being honest about the issues with sales put a rocket up the team’s bum.

The project team chipped in and it was all hands on deck to get the job done. I’m super proud of how the team responded but it also shows their commitment to our business.

I’m really lucky to have a great team working on this business. My general manager Ben has also stepped up in a big way. He’s taking more of my plate each day.

🌍️ Planet and People (website under construction)

Giles is one of my best friends. We talk business weekly and I’ve wanted to create a project with him for years. Giles recently grew a recruitment business to over £3M a year.

We’ve both become more and more interested in sustainability and passionate about this area.

Planet and People is a recruitment company focused on finding the best talent for roles in sustainability.

If you know anyone seeking a role in this area or you need to hire - drop us a line. We’d love to chat.

 🎬️ YouTube

I’ve been growing a lot on this platform and have learned a huge amount. I was going to talk about it in this email but I’ve waffled enough.

Will discuss my learning about growing a YouTube channel and revenue from it in the next email.

📩 Thanks for reading! Hit me up with any feedback, or questions or to have a chat. I’d love to grow my network more and talk with some of my subscribers.