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Agency Forward explores the future of agencies as tech and AI drive down the cost of tactical deliverables. Topics include building competent teams, developing strategic offers, systemizing your business, and more.
New episodes delivered every Tuesday.
Chris DuBois 0:00
Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Brian Beiler. Brian is the COO at aptitude eight, a HubSpot Elite Partner. He's got an impressive range of experience from tech systems analytics, program management and business operations. But he's also a very down to earth guy as seen in his LinkedIn content. And that got me excited to have a very real conversation around building strong teams for agencies, and Brian delivered. In this episode, we discuss how agencies can build world class teams, the biggest blockers and agencies attracting the right people, structuring your agency for maximum effectiveness and efficiency and more. Today's episode is brought to you by Zen pilot, there are lots of tools out there for agencies to manage project, but any project issues aren't usually caused by the tool. They're from your own processes, because then violet helps agencies implement their project management tools while streamlining operations. So your team can move from chaos to clarity, you can see for yourself at Zen pilot.com/forward. And now ladies and gentlemen, Brian Beiler. It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward. What types of people do you look for in building a world class team?
Speaker 1 1:25
is a great question, Chris. I think things that I look for, and we as an organization look for our you know, people who are excited about HubSpot, you know, there are a lot of talented people, but I you know, out in the in the hiring world these days, but I would say that, you know, everyone in our company truly loves HubSpot and believes it is the tool of future. So we are looking for people who enjoy that, you know, looking for folks who have, you know, interest in pushing the limits of it, right, you know, a lot of the work that we do is is not out of the box is not vanilla work, these are really truly challenging use cases. And there are individuals who like those kinds of things, and folks who don't prefer them, and that's okay, I'd say most of our team are folks who really enjoy very hard to solve problems, complex use cases, edge cases, things that maybe can't be done and figured out if they can be done, right, this is a different way of thinking about things. I think, you know, one of our core values is solution oriented. So people who view problems from, you know, a solution centric approach, I think is, is something we probably naturally index for, you know, recently did a LinkedIn post about this, but things that I am personally interested in hiring and some a typical things I look for when I'm hiring, you know, high performing individuals are folks who, you know, have worked, you know, maybe work foodbev, you know, in their career, you know, in college or individual who traveled internationally, particularly who studied abroad, it's very interesting to me, you know, I think gives different perspective, you know, veterans, individuals who've served in our military, you know, as well as in the medical field, you know, so, you know, very different dynamic kinds of backgrounds, but I think there are, you know, someone's history pre, you know, they're the resume is often is interesting to me, about, you know, their, their future potential and their, you know, their what their resume says, So, when I interview, I'll sometimes index on questions that aren't, you know, hey, what was your last job? Like, you know, I can read a lot of that in the resume. But tell me, you know, you know, about yourself or your family, your individual if you have any pets, and I think there's a really a personal component of getting to know someone in an interview process that can help you align with culture fit, and things like that, that, you know, not all hiring managers, I think weigh as heavily.
Chris DuBois 3:43
So are you using I guess HubSpot is like that preliminary criteria, like we we like to see that you have this experience. Now, we're going to kind of go further on, you're deeper than the experience and types are looking at character. Everything from there.
Speaker 1 3:57
Yeah, I'd say that's accurate. I mean, for us, I mean, a plus definitely the the tax the admission fee, if you will. And of course, we index for, you know, proficiency, right, and deep technical proficiency, you know, are the kind of individuals who were on our consulting teams here in our pods. You know, our, our interview process is quite, quite stringent. It's, it's challenging, even for folks who knows about very well, it is challenging not to dissuade me from flying. If you're interested. You should. But you know, I think sussing out someone's technical prowess. That's really for us the easy part. Right? And we have many very talented individuals who apply to work here. And we're fortunate and thankful for that. You know, so it feels kind of like that's the bar right? You know, it's like then what right you know, if you give me five individuals who are equally technically talented, you know, then what other things we're looking for kind of behind the behind the behind the curtain. And you know, things you look for, you know, like I said, previous leadership, kind of a dynamic background. As individuals who have you know, worked other agencies is always interesting, have done consulting, you know, those kinds of things, there's, there's a lot to be said about, you know, working in a consulting firm, particularly a scaling company or agency, there's just, you know, the kind of wherewithal, one has to have to kind of grow and scale and in the time to put into how to get those little things done, that if you don't do them, no one will notice if you don't do them, but company will, will feel it. You know, I think there's, there's components of it like that, too, that are really hard to, to pinpoint, you know, but they're, but they're tangible. So that's the challenge, I think of the new process, probably not only for us, but for many organizations.
Chris DuBois 5:42
One of the more interesting tests I've started doing during the hiring process, and like tests for me, not for the individual, but was just asking the question of what is something you could teach me right now? And then asking them to actually teach me and it was pretty eye opening just on their character to see what are they actually passionate about that they could just talk right now? And just go. They gave a lot of insights, I think into the character separate from what's on the resume and what we're going to test that with, like, you want to be a marketer. Okay, we got these tests that we're going to pay you to do. That was really interesting. I don't know if you've ever tried something similar? Yeah,
Speaker 1 6:18
I have a friend of mine, who I won't mention today, but they, you know, they were on hiring for another another lead partner. And I know, that's one of the interview questions, because I know some of the works there. And they shared with me. Fortunately, they got the job. And now they're their trainer their l&d team there? So it is a great question. I agree. You know, a framework that I like, we don't use it here. But I've always liked it is the STAR method. HubSpot uses it, you know, a number of other large SAS companies will use this right. And what I like about it is, you know, you're, you're kind of forcing the candidate to convey information, a lot of information succinctly, right? So what it what it really assesses three things. For me, it's like one, the ability to simply follow directions, right? To, if they're not expecting that the ability to kind of think on their feet, because it's, you know, it's a good candidate will prepare for the interview process, right. But sometimes, someone who's really prepared can kind of, I don't know, pass the warning signals, if you will, or something like that. And so when you ask someone a question that perhaps are not prepared for, it's not intended to be a gotcha. But if they're not prepared for it, it judges their ability to be able to say, Okay, let me think, you know, think that quickly, quickly land on a solution, and then articulate it back to you in front of it is not me with the STAR method. You know, it, we look at the situation, right? It's like, what was the thing? The task? what needed to be done? Right? The actions is the A there, what did I do personally, you know, to support this, in the AR is the result, right? What was the outcome of that? And so you ask someone a question, you'll maybe frame it, hey, you know, using the STAR method, perhaps send them a link, you know, tell me about a time that you solve the client's problem, or you work resulted escalation successfully. And they may already have a use case in mind that they can, you know, freely talk about. But when you change the framing, now they need to really pick apart what actually happened, and then talk about their role in it. It also takes us sometimes from five minutes or 10 minutes explanation to two minutes, which is more efficient, and lets you ask more questions. So I like frameworks like that, again, we don't use them in any formal way. But I think those are curious to me. And I personally found invaluable the past.
Chris DuBois 8:28
Yeah, great. When I was leaving the Army, that was one of the you have to do like a 10 day training on how to move into civilian life, because they don't want to just let us release us, right, we're gonna go crazy. And so that that was part of the thing, like prepping for interviews, and the STAR method was drilled into us over and over and you can imagine they have the military does the repetitiveness of training in order to make sure it happens, like, yeah, that's stuck up here. Now,
Speaker 1 8:57
I think it's like this civilian equivalent of a syrup. Right, you know? Tell me exactly what happened. And nothing more, nothing less to do anyway. Carry on.
Chris DuBois 9:07
Right? Yeah, we got a couple of minutes on the radio, let's do it. So you didn't mention you like looking for people in like customer service? I'm assuming it's primarily so that you also get that service kind of mentality of being able to work with clients from an operational perspective. Now, what are you doing? What kind of systems what types of things are you hoping that you're bringing to the table with your team in order to provide just a great level of experience for your clients?
Speaker 1 9:34
Right? I mean, there's, there's so many like little micro skills you learned, I mean, if we look at some a skill, like, you know, waiting tables or even bartending, let's say, you know, have you dealt with an angry customer whose food comes out exactly where they ordered it, but there's still unhappy complaints about every component of the meal, but it's still your job to smile and you know, and do what they say, to make $5 Right, you know, and that's hard work right? These you know, Many of these folks are working doubles, you know, on the weekends, you know, so it's hard work, they're long hours, you know, many customers very challenging. But the type of person who can, you know, thrive in that environment or just do it for the time that they feel necessary? You know, there's just so many little component skills that you you learn and you gain from that experience that I can't teach someone, right? I can't teach someone wisdom. I can't teach someone patience, right? I can't teach someone, you know, persistence in the face of adversity. You know, you know, have you been, you know, cursed out by an old lady because her coffee is too cold? You know, not sorry, lady Sam have been cursed out by elderly person, because their coffee is to gold, easily had nothing to do with it. You know, how do you deal with that? Right? Because occasionally, right? In the professional world, we have clients, right? Happy, right? Hopefully, they're not upset because their coffee is cold. But these are skills that directly translate, right. And not to say that someone who's never had a professional experience prior to post college or never work in these industries doesn't have those skills. That's, that's not true, there isn't a correlation. But I found the converse is true innovation have seem to fare better in professional setting, because they have that work experience, that real experience, you know, dealing with these things, and the ability to separate emotion for professionalism, you know, and get the job done, right. Because the end of the day, you know, the person in cable 23, you know, doesn't care, they just want to have more coffee and a good meal, right? And so your job objective is to deliver that, however possible, you know, if that means going back to the kitchen, saying, hey, was supposed to meet in rare, you know, it's you know, it's, it's well done, or, you know, coordinating with the bar, hey, I'm still waiting on, you know, their soda, whatever it is, there's, you know, this cross functional collaboration, there's so many there's little microcosms that exist in those types of employments that I think really translate, and I believe they prepare people for a work the workforce in a way that others may not have the same vantage point.
Chris DuBois 11:54
So there's a lot of soft skills, which are obviously harder to train, right. But I think if you do break, every soft skill is made up of a series of hard skills, just on a smaller level that make it up. So like. Speaking on stage, right, okay. Do you have good posture? Do you have good enunciation? Do you have good? And those are all things that you can like, document, say, okay, am I getting better at this, but it is really hard to be able to develop those skills. And so yeah, when you're bringing in like a new team member, it's 100%, easier to say, hey, they already have the skills you've demonstrated by having this type of career before and nataline command, and then you can just focus on teaching those hard skills that are necessary for the actual job. Yeah, I agree. 100%. I want to get a future basis. Now. What are some of those things that in the game changing? Right? How are you looking at it operationally, with team members? What are those skills that you think are going to be kind of more important in the future? Now given technology changes, and buyer behavior, all these different things?
Speaker 1 13:00
I think future proofing, I mean, skills if I was, you know, a new consultant up and coming or working at AMC things that, you know, I would really focus on maybe perhaps even, I think the ability to just kind of adapt quickly, right organizations move at a lightning speed nowadays. And change is has become a very normal thing for many scaling companies. And change bothers many people. And that's okay, right. But I think you need many consultants, things that I think are becoming valuable, are individuals who adapt to change quickly, right, and don't turn analyze it, but say, Hey, this is understand acknowledged as part of the job, right? And how I, how I deal with that kind of sets the tone, the pace, because many organizations that are scaling are, are just moving too quickly, to not make those changes. And even five or 10 years ago, organizations were slower to make strategic changes, right? Because they had time to kind of figure it out. We don't have the luxury of that of that time anymore. If you're not moving quickly. If you try somebody doesn't work. And you don't pivot quickly enough, you can lose a quarter, two quarters, you could lose a year. And the extent to that impacts your revenue, your brand power recognition, your place within your respective ecosystem can be can be momentous. Right. So, you know, we have to move quickly. And the reason is, technology is moving so quickly, right? I mean, 18 months ago, no one was talking about AI. No one knew what a GPT was. Now it's embedded in our daily lives in so kind of related to that ability to change with sicknesses and seeing the ability to learn new technologies and adapt to new technologies, right. You know, organizations who are not embracing AI right now are missing the boat, they are missing the boat and they will be left behind. It is a certainty. Right. But, you know, that's not a problem. We have, for example, at our company, everyone is excited about it, right? We're pushing the limits. We're building custom GPUs we're doing for a year, right? We're embedding it and Any components of our organization wherever it's appropriate, you know, we're thinking of use case for this, not to say we're doing it right or wrong, you know, many things we still need to improve, right. But again, looking at the skills that ended up working in tech, it's, it's the ability to change quickly. Teach Yourself new skills, you know, with with regards to learning new skills, you know, this concept on the job training, most companies do not have an on formal on the job training anymore. It just doesn't exist. It didn't 10 to 15 years ago, right? They would say something like, Hey, Chris, we need you to learn this new technology, we're going to send you to school, we're going to teach you, you're gonna get the skills and it's going to be great, and you don't come back and do it. There are certainly organizations who do that there are large tech companies with multimillion dollar PD budgets, right? Most companies are unable to provide that as a benefit, even though they would like to, right. So it's Hey, Chris, there's, you know, this project requires a new skill. Do you want to learn it or not? Right? You don't have to. And you know, so the people that are getting ahead in some of their careers are like, you know, what, I got this all figured out, take a course online, maybe the country pays for it, or whatever. But you can teach yourself, you can learn a new skill, you can acquire a new skill, right? Like there's not, you're not going to school to learn how to use a GPT, right? It's something you're interested in and want to adapt or don't. So, I'd say self, self motivated individuals and self learners are really impactful individuals, you know, in an agency setting, those are a few standout skills that I would I would consider are, perhaps, that are, are now really relevant, impactful, that perhaps were not as, as price, let's say.
Chris DuBois 16:37
I want to go back to what you're saying about just needing to move fast and kind of adapt to new technologies and everything. Bezos in like a letter to shareholders back in the 1900s. Had differentiated type one doors with type two doors with a type one being like, if we make this decision, there's no coming back. So we got to be very sure this decision versus type two, hey, we can come back soon as we see, right, let's make these very fast. What are you guys doing within you're just kind of decision making process to kind of know, hey, this is something that could be a thing, we need to try it out really quick test it out, versus making those very, like much more deliberate decisions, I guess, where it's like, this might be the right choice. We don't know what we're gonna bet on it. And, and go forth?
Speaker 1 17:22
Yeah, that's a great question, Chris. So we, you know, we have a, you know, I'm privileged and fortunate to work with a world class executive team. And, you know, we so we, you know, those large strategic decisions that we might call them, we have you as an executive team, we kind of all align, we seek each other's opinions and feedback to reaching those decisions. And ultimately, we make a go, no go decision. And we say go on those, you know, some of those are more said permanent, or perhaps a higher risk, you know, or could be higher reward, but they're certainly harder to backtrack from. So I think alignment as an executive team on those decisions is the best you can hope for. And if the smartest people in the room and you know that you excuse me, if the smartest people in the room, you know, all agree it's the right path. And hey, at least we can say we were aligned, you know, and, you know, and it says yami Rankin, the CEO of HubSpot famously said, alignment eat strategy for breakfast. We feel that way. So if we're aligned, and we all agree is the right path forward, then if it's the wrong decision, that's okay. Because, you know, we were you acting upon the data and business intelligence that was available to us, those lesser strategic decisions, we empower our, you know, our deliberate leads in our, you know, our different departments to make those added to our level. And we give our teams the autonomy to make those decisions. It's okay to fail. You know, one of our one of our core values is, you know, there are no pioneers. No, no, you're gonna edit this with Chris. One of our core values is that there are no experts in the wild west only pioneers, right? And so that is kind of how we view change, right? It's, it's okay to try things, they're not always going to work, it's okay to fail. And that's totally fine. As long as they're to your point. They're not massive decisions. But we experiment a lot. And I think our our risk tolerance and our ability to experiment, kind of make fosters a culture where it's perfectly fine to backtrack from decisions. And we do so quickly. As soon as there's sufficient data that suggests the decision was probably the wrong one. We don't wait. We just, you know, either undo it, click Undo Manzi or whatever it may be, you know, to do that, so we don't we don't let things sit for a while. We view many organizations do that. And we feel that that is, you know, it's a competitive advantage nowadays, to not to sit around and wait, right once you know that the decision was not the right one. You know, there's there's oftentimes very few reasons to not go backwards, if you will.
Chris DuBois 19:58
Yeah, I had read, I think Talk to us on another podcast. The two kind of big, the only two, like real competitive advantages for business are your culture and your velocity. And I think the velocity actually kind of leans into the culture side where like, you can have a culture of just moving slow and very deliberate or, like being as deliberate as you can be while moving fast. I want to ask, though, so two of your values come up couple times. Now solution oriented, is kind of one of your core values. Right? Then no experts in the wild west only pioneers. With with both of these, what are you doing? Kind of make sure the team is actually living these on a daily basis?
Speaker 1 20:43
It's a great question, I would say, it feels like Chris, we don't have to do anything, right. I think that kind of the front end of our conversation, it starts in the hiring process, right? If you our core values, our site, those core values are very interesting to many people, they are perhaps less interesting to others, or not as motivating or enticing. But, you know, even the interview process, they come up in discussion, people are excited about them, you know, there's some other ones, you know, that are worth indexing on. One is, you know, let's try it, let's just do it, for example. But I would say we don't have to, it feels like we don't have to do anything, it feels very organic. It feels like we, you know that the individuals that thrive in environments like ours, you know, that want to be here and want to be on a team that's as high performing moving as quickly as we are, these are the types of things that these individuals generally value, which is why they are our core values. It's not like, you know, at some point, you know, Connor, or a CEO and owner just sat down and said, these are gonna be our core values. It was never been like that here. Right. Everything is very organic and democratic. And, you know, some of the core values have been added over the years, right, as, as we identify new things that are important organization, you know, we add to that repository of core values. And that's okay. Right. So they're also very applicable. Right. They're very specific, right, and custom and bespoke. And so I think that they are core values are as much indicative of our culture, as our culture is of our core values. And that's, that's really starts with our people. Right? Again, earlier, I talked about, you know, our propensity to experiment, right, that kind of ties into that pioneers thing, right. We were often doing new things that have never been done before, by any partners, you know, HubSpot, you know, will come to us and say, Hey, we're not sure if this can be done or not, would you like to try? Right? And we say, Yeah, great. Let's do it. And again, the individuals who work here, want to try it, they're like, yes, let's try to solve this problem. Right. So it feels like the score kind of takes care of itself there. Yeah, that's
Chris DuBois 22:42
definitely. I love that feeling. When you you get handed a challenge. And certain team members just say like, Yes, please. And they you like, see their excitement go up? Because they're working on a challenge. And it's like, yes, those are the people I want to surround myself with. We use something the agency I'd worked at, called the Mojo meter, every Friday, everyone would just work completely remote team, right? So everybody would just plug in a score on this for like, how's your week go? And it just gives leadership kind of a bearing to see how are people doing? Who do I need to check in with, you plug in a couple notes. But every time the developers were given something hard to work on their Mojo's right through the roof. And then the weeks that they're just doing the routine work. It was like it was always sort of trending down. It's like, okay, well, we brought in the right developers.
Speaker 1 23:26
Right, right. We, I don't mean, so we thing. I often refer to our dev team, as this is how it works. You know, and if you are a wizard, then you'll have fun at Hogwarts, and you are with the other wizards. And if we get to do cool things, and cast spells and solve things in the riddles, if you're not a wizard, and you don't want to be a wizard, then you shouldn't go to Hogwarts. Right, but our devs are doing some really incredible, incredible project, incredible work, things I can't even share, because it's so exciting. But to your point, they love doing it. And it's exciting. You know, it's it's, it's full stack, it's back stack, you know, back end it, there's so many different components to it. You know, and again, staying on the cutting edge of the technologies, a bit of our discussion earlier, you know, about individuals who, you know, wanting to try new things, teach new things and evolve new skills, you know, our team, and they're up to date on the latest frameworks and different methods and technologies. You know, in the healthcare ecosystem, a change that happened in the last year was, you know, we have this concept of CRM cards, which, you know, last year were all JSON based, like no one needed to tell our dev team like, Hey, guys, you know, they're, we're gonna switch to react, they were like, react Hekia. Let's do this. And so we're already well prepared and, and had our clients migrated over, you know, very quickly. This was a fun project.
Chris DuBois 24:44
So operationally, he's what are you seeing as one of the biggest blockers for agencies moving forward?
Speaker 1 24:54
Biggest blocker, for instance, going forward. I chatted with a colleague about this recently and it's things that we hear or seeing in the space that are blockers not to say ones the biggest, but definitely things we're learning from is many agencies, you know, end up being Jack's of all trades and really masters of none. So they say, Oh, we can do that, yeah, we can do that we can do everything. And so they'll take on really any type of project, for reasons unknown, maybe just to drive the revenue. Not sure I don't want to propose. But there, it is impossible, and it is becoming increasingly more impossible to do that. Right. You know, it's, we saw an emergence with Mark, he was right, where, you know, over the years, it's, you know, that we had Content Market marketing, and that we had, you know, experimental marketing for a while, and there was this true agency world and then he kind of became more ads world and market he is, we see these evolutions in these different epochs, right where now like, I would say, a traditional a true marketing, and she should not be good at technical consulting, it shouldn't be right. A technical consulting firm should not be delivering perhaps, you know, the, at the same level of quality and skill as a true marketing. So if I want a custom bespoke weave, beautiful website, I should go to an agency that specializes in that, right? If I want to, you know, highly custom integration with my ERP and lots of data migration, the same the types of individuals who can build me a beautiful website, are probably not the same individuals that can build that custom integration with SAP or something, right. And so what we're seeing is an increased specialization of individuals and just in the workforce, right. And as the agencies that aren't embracing that, that aren't acknowledging that they take on work that they're not perhaps best equipped for, and they fail, right. And all it takes is a couple of those large projects to bleed into the red to just kill your p&l, right, and just even just tank, right, and then you're forced with layoffs, and you have low profitability, and you can't really raise your rates. And there's, there's just so many factors that so I'd say it really starts with the biggest mistake, I think, probably is taking on work that you're not well suited for, or perhaps not best suited for. Yeah. And so just being selective of your ICP, right, who is my ideal customer who shouldn't be working with who should not be? Sometimes I see within industries, right, there are industries that we prefer to not work in, because they're not our strongest suits. But there are other industries like education nonprofit, that we do a ton of work, and we've got hundreds of use cases for it, right. So I think it's being prepared for the work and saying no, to work, that's not a good fit. That is that is something that many agencies are not doing that they should see a second one is this tendency to, to shortcut or fast track the sales process, there are many agencies who have one or two calls with someone to give us a way to work, right? It's our belief in others, our wine agree that you probably need to spend a little bit more time with someone in the pre sales process, you know, to really understand what you want to deliver. So it's really hard to get clarity on scope, you know, in a 30 minute meeting, or in a one hour meeting, right. Unless the prospect comes with very clear specific things that they want, you know, Pat well packaged, you need to do some more discovery. So we believe it's, you know, we spend a lot of time in the pre sales process. You know, we have dedicated solution architects, you know, our sales processes, you know, could be oh, you know, two weeks or so, you know, for a decent size, opportunity, sometimes longer, you know, what the individuals who are buying larger complex projects, expect that acknowledge that and would expect nothing else really. But many organizations, even when selling technically complex or large projects are just kind of, you know, kind of blindly sending out statements of work, and it only sets them up for failure down down that road, right, the delivery teams that are tasked with delivering that work are going to have a bad time, right? You can't you know, again, that the days of just selling a bunch of hours and doing stuff, that they're quickly fading, that's just not what savvy buyers want. And you're going to fail client expectations. So I'd say a combination of those three things are probably all under the same umbrella. But it's selling the right things, right. It's selling to the right customers not selling the wrong ones. You know, it's making sure that you're scoping your project sufficiently, you don't get burned, right, because that's those three things is what's just torching many agencies and partners, presently, I think those that are, you know, wise enough to or perhaps, you know, cunning enough to not do those are the ones that are starting to pull ahead. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 29:25
I want to get into actually about scoping for a second. So when I was running the agency, the normally I wouldn't handle all the sales conversations, but like I had one I stuck it up with someone who's named Rob like well known in the marketing space. So he understood what he needed for his website. And so when we started talking, it was a very quick right like I understood from that 30 minute call. I recorded a video I built out scope, I sent it over and his response back was like look, you so clearly explain what the problem that I'm facing is and what the goal is that I knew you had the solution for this. And so like that was a great case. On the other side, it's like, there's so many projects where it's like, yeah, I don't understand. But I think on some level, it comes down to the customer also not understanding. So very recently, I had a, I was referred to someone, and a company, I'm not really doing website work anymore as an agency coach, but someone someone knew me from doing work. So they referred me to someone else talking to a guy in the company. And we did like a deep dive, and what do you need? Like, we kind of listed everything out, I got it all structured for them. And, and then the company decided to do an RFP. Right. And so now everyone submitted their bids. Nowhere in the RFP, did it, talk about like, the actual scope of the project. And like, Hey, this is what we need for pricing information from you this what we need for this. And so like I gave it like, I attach my spreadsheet that I use, and I made a little, little line, you know, it's a, Hey, I talked to this team member to really get go deep on what you guys need. And I think this is this is it, like, no one's going to be able to respond to this RFP without more information. And I didn't win the RFP. But when I talked to the individual that I had initially talked to, he said, no one else reached out for information. So that client selected someone purely based on price, which means now they're going to get something that the agency is not going to actually deliver great work and what they need. And so yeah, I can 100% I kind of like understanding what should go into that is probably more important than actually delivering the scope of work. Like in that sales process. It's like discovery processes. under appreciated, it's true.
Speaker 1 31:40
And for us, it's full circle, Chris, we see the tail end of that as well. So, you know, perhaps they choose to work another partner, or maybe we never interface with them. But something goes bad, a project goes awry, they're burned out of 20 3040 $50,000 or more, right? And they escalate to a customer success manager, it ends up getting escalated within us but ecosystem, and at some point someone has not reached out to us like, Hey, we've got a customer who's in a lot of pain, can you help them? In? We do. And it's we do a lot of that work, right? You know, it's someone who has been failed before, you know, we're really good at helping them we're kind of plastic surgeons of the ecosystem, I think, in some ways, but the problem for the customer is it's going to cost them a lot more to fix it, than it would have to do it right in the first place. Right. And that's an unfortunate reality of doing business. Often the fix is more expensive than, you know, the initial scope should have been. But to your point, you know, unsavoury customers, they don't know that, right? You know, they trust that, you know, these folks can deliver, deliver this work, and they've got the, you know, the badges and you know, the different credentials and those kinds of things. You know, and unfortunately, you know, this is a reality that that happens, not only in our ecosystem, but in all of business, right, you know, sometimes failed to deliver,
Chris DuBois 32:59
when it's, I think it's one of the reasons why agencies can get a bad reputation. Or it's like, the client is coming to you, because you're an expert, like, provide them that level of expertise that they're they're hoping to get, and if that means telling them, I cannot deliver this result for less than this, like it will take this work. That's the truth they need to hear in order because they're gonna go find someone else, and just be dissatisfied with that level of work. And now you're, you're not helping your own reputation, right?
Speaker 1 33:24
Like, even Hey, we can deliver this work, no one can, you shouldn't do it. It's a bad idea. You know, and I think it takes a lot of courage in the sales process, Elon to turn out the work, but to have the report the client to say, hey, like, you know, we're recommending you should look, you should not do this, for these reasons, you know, it's not gonna be the outcome you want. And oftentimes, you know, maybe they'll listen, sometimes they don't, and I suppose they'll find out the outcome on their own. But yeah, it kind of all ties in together, right. You know, it's the concept of agencies not being good at everything, too, you know, about selling the right things, and it's kind of all starts pre sales, right? I think that's your expectation, expectation starting to get begins. That's where the relationship building begins. And that's where you also have to have a deep understanding of like, what your team delivers, what they can deliver, right, what are your capabilities? You know, again, I think the days of it used to be even, I mean, even five years ago, I felt like, you know, in most industries, you can sell some hours and figure it out later. They continue to make it if you will, and look, many companies have scaled based upon failure to make it if you've got smart people who work there, maybe you can, but I think those days are numbered, you know, again, our buyers are more savvy, now. They understand technology deeper, you're not fooling, you know, the modern SAS buyer. You know, they understand this stuff like they they can see through the traditional sales tactics in the smoke and mirrors and the vaporware that used to exist in technology. Now they're like, Yo, this doesn't work. You have failed to meet our contractual obligations, you know, I talk to my attorney. And so it's just it's a very different ecosystem to where like, you know, the the unsavory practices are just, you know, not working and you know, alarmingly increasingly fast rate, which is probably a good thing. Yet many people still persist with trying them, I think.
Chris DuBois 35:20
So earlier, you mentioned that you guys have a pod structure for the agency. Are you assigning out certain, like metrics that the team should be maintaining, or individuals within that team are responsible for like the same metric in each pod? How are you kind of looking at this from like, a numbers game?
Speaker 1 35:39
It's a good question, we believe that our pod model is, you know, probably one of the biggest, most impactful changes that we've made in the last last year or so in the business, you know, and again, it's, it's, we have five teams, five pods that are all cross functional, all set up with a kind of a very balanced skill set, a bit of a Swiss army knife for us, all of our teams have, you know, a leadership, you know, they have, you know, senior consultants and principal consultants, you know, in some junior consultants for different types of work, developers embedded project management bed, and so, one team, you know, to talk with you, you know, these are like individual units, you've got little mini Delta forces, right, where, you know, give them the mission, and they have all the tools and the different stakeholders and the different expertise and roles to deliver the mission. Right, you know, and it's been very beneficial for us, it's allowed us to make the shift enterprise work, I think, Pastor Chris, right, because enterprise clients don't want a Chris, or Brian, you know, they don't want a consultant assigned to them, they need a team of five to seven people, right, doing different cross functional things, different skill sets. So that's the evolution we made, it has been very beneficial with regards to the KPIs associated with it, you know, we're not, we don't try to reinvent the wheel there, right, how you deliver services and service quality is long long been invented. So of course, we look at things like, you know, the your general project management KPIs, you know, schedule performance, you know, budget performance, you know, deliverable quality, you know, we don't do any defect counting or anything like that. But of course, you know, we have proper UHT and testing processes, but it's scheduled hearings, you know, budget hearings are big ones, you know, we're looking at, you know, variance against baseline, those types of things. The big ones our clients care about is like, you know, did you deliver? What are what the scope said? Like, was it on time? So those are kind of really our Northstar metrics at a pod level. Below that we don't we don't segregate it any any further to you
Chris DuBois 37:37
get your pods kind of run their own book of business? Or are you managing sales higher? And then handing clients to each pod? Yeah, we
Speaker 1 37:46
made a sales at a team and organizational level, you know, or revenue function is separate from our delivery function. They work very closely together, you know, but we, I would say, the the alignment is, our project assignments, Chris are not are not random, right? You know, you could do that. And, you know, you can say it's just purely purely based upon capacity, which is a fine model. But we tried to be a little smarter than that, because we have data, right. You know, we know things about our consultants, right. We have consultants who've worked, you know, long careers in the Salesforce ecosystem, before coming to work with us. I've got a really complex Salesforce project. And that team has capacity. You know, it makes sense for the client for that consultant to be this one consultant. Right. You know, we have individuals who worked in particular industries, right one had a career in AI and automation within the automotive industry. Right. So, you know, we had a project recently, and it just happened to be, we'll say, right up their alley, of course, is going to be that team, right. And so we're trying to let matchmaking where we can, right and really aligning the chess pieces for us. It's not just, you gotta deal you got to do you gotta do you gotta you got a project, you got a project? It's, we've got this project. Okay, what is the project? What are the skills required in this project? We think this team is best suited for this project because of their combined skill set. Right? And so we just try to be a little bit smarter with project assignment. And also, like some people enjoy certain types of work. Right. Chris, if I knew that you, I don't know, hit it definitely work. You know, where possible, I would try to limit the amount of nursery work I give you because I want you to be happy and have a lot of autonomy, enjoying the work you do. So that that that the pod model allows us to do things like that, instead of just one in one out? I think it's I think it's helpful. Yeah,
Chris DuBois 39:27
one of the things that I work on with my clients is like, we need to structure the offer around your team's competencies, right? Like, we don't want to do something that we don't enjoy and that we're not good at. And so let's build the offers around that. With the pod structure. Now, you really have the ability to have multiple teams that you can be handing off that work to get even a more like specialized focus for everything. So I think that's pretty awesome. All right. Great conversation. Thank you for joining. I've got two more questions for you. With the first being what book Do you recommend every agency leader should read?
Speaker 1 40:03
You know, ironically, I alluded to it earlier, the score will take care of itself by Bill Walsh. In basically the premise of the book is, you know, he was the famed coach of the San Francisco 40, Niners multiple, Super Bowl winning coach in his premise was basically and so wonderful read, but the premise and this was his mantra for his players that look, if you are showing up in practice every day, working hard, you understand your position, the drills, you do you know how to run your routes, you focus in your role, you are running back, you focus on being the best Paul's running back, you can be right you are a cornerback worry, you know, whatever defense defensive lineman, if you focus on and do all the things you're supposed to do, you put in all the reps. And if everybody on the team is doing that, and the scoreboard take care of itself, we don't have to worry about the score, right? Because if everyone is mastering their individual craft, staying in their lane, focusing on delivering their mini mission, right to the best of their abilities, and everything else is gonna be fine. And it was, you know, it's a it's a kind of wonderful book, but it talks a lot of his coaching style and legacy and how that worked. And I've clearly taken something from it, because I think I mentioned it earlier. But I believe that is true, right? If everyone on the team, you know, we talked about hiring from the players are high free individuals. If everyone is doing their job, you know, at the level we expect them to, then it's gonna be fine, right, then we don't have to worry about it, right? It's it, we're going to be great, we're going to be successful, we're going to prosper, we're going to get ahead. You know, and I think it's a very pragmatic way of viewing this.
Chris DuBois 41:30
I'm reading 10x is easier than to X right now, which is a pretty interesting mindset shift. I won't get into it too much. But one of the portions of the book is about finding your unique ability, and then really leaning into that. So like when you do the Pareto principle, and like this is the 20% that people go to you for this, because you are the best, like they just, this is what people think about you with. But I think it plays very well into that idea of like if you just focus on your job, but that job also happens to be your unique ability. Like now you're creating a powerhouse team that we can actually get run and so awesome. Last question. Where can people find you?
Speaker 1 42:10
I'm most active on LinkedIn. So feel free to add me on there. I don't know how many Brian brothers there are. But take a look. I'll be the bald bearded guy, but I spend a lot of time on there. And, you know, also you know up to date website is full of great resources. Feel free to check us out there to learn more about the company. Awesome.
Chris DuBois 42:27
And Brian, thanks for Thanks for joining. That's the show everyone. You can leave a rating and review or you can do something that benefits you. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on substack. You'll get weekly content, resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai