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The WP Minute brings you news about WordPress in under 5 minutes -- every week! Follow The WP Minute for the WordPress headlines before you get lost in the headlines. Hosted by Matt Medeiros, host of The Matt Report podcast.
Eric Karkovack (00:00)
Hi everyone, and welcome to the WP Minute. I'm Eric Karkovack. Today's episode features a segment from Matt's interview with Oli Feldman, the head of global sales over at Hosting.com. Oli shared some winning strategies for agencies looking to grow their business. You can catch the entire interview over on our WP Minute Plus podcast. Visit thewpminute.com for more details.
Matt Medeiros (00:28)
I'm sure the agency owner out there, especially like the boutique agency owner, two, three people wondering how to like level up their game, how to get to the bigger customer. Although not always, more money doesn't always mean better. Maybe we'll unpack that in a little while, but there are folks listening to this going, hey, I'd like to have this sort of relationship with a hosting provider ⁓ that can be a partner alongside of me. ⁓
Olly Feldman (00:41)
Yeah.
Matt Medeiros (00:55)
What's the mindset of an agency that you work with that says, here's how they serve customers. Here's how they think about business, right? They're not just building websites, they're doing what else? What's your thoughts on that?
Olly Feldman (01:07)
Yeah, it's a really interesting question because we see it a lot where people all have the same type of mindset and succeed and the people who are trying to succeed and they're not necessarily thinking about the mindset or way of doing it. They're trying to win that next big customer as you say. Whereas where we've seen agencies really have success and go from freelancer to one or two developers, boutique up into a bigger agency has been two areas really, which is niching down.
So really focusing on what they specialize in and who they want to specialize it for. But actually the main one is when they strip it back and start looking at their processes internally and how profitable every part of that process is, and therefore productize that offering rather than just sell everything. So they actually look at all of the services they provide to clients, who their most profitable clients are.
take the services they're providing to them and productize it in a way that is easily repeatable, almost cookie cutter. So we can resell this service, we can resell this service at a profitable price and it allows them to focus. And then you kind of get away from the, let's have a two week plan to build a proposal for a new client that we want on board that we don't win. And you perhaps do that three or four times until you win one and you've lost a lot of time. Instead, you've got a repeatable process so that pitching becomes quicker.
and then the build becomes quicker because it's all repeatable and scalable and process driven that allows you to do more volume and have more time back to actually then focus and grow.
Matt Medeiros (02:36)
By the time this episode comes out, ⁓ dear listener or viewer, there should be ⁓ another, hopefully everything goes right by the time this episode goes out. There'll be another course ⁓ at the wpminute.com slash courses. The first one that's there now is hosting decoded. It's how to pick the best WordPress hosting provider for your agency. And the next course is obviously going to forget the title because it's still being developed right now, but it's about
Olly Feldman (02:44)
Hahaha
Matt Medeiros (03:05)
scoping WordPress projects and some of the stuff that Ollie just mentioned are in actually in both of these courses where there's a lot of folks in the in the agency game they go I gotta build some like in order to move up I must build something custom it must be so unique and so in-depth to get the bigger dollars like that's the only way to go about it but what I want to unpack is what Ollie mentioned about process
I say this all the time as a recovering agency owner of a decade, like honing down on the things that you do really good. Like I always say the core competency of the agency and putting that into a repeatable package. doesn't, it doesn't push you into retail. If that phrase makes sense, it doesn't push you into, you're just this place that does this thing over and over again. It's not like a warehouse of websites, but it does focus ⁓ the customer's attention.
so they understand where your core competency is. And it focuses your team's attention into like, yeah man, 80 % of the projects, this is how we react. 20 % of the projects, we do a different thing. Your thoughts from Boots on the Ground, Ollie, on getting somebody to get over that, like, oh, I don't wanna create a done for you service, I don't wanna create this retail offering, I wanna be bespoke and custom and hands on. What are your thoughts?
Olly Feldman (04:29)
Yeah, I mean, I like to refer to it as moving from a construction site to a bakery where you have set recipes, set ways of doing things. Yes, you can customize it and tweak it and change it, but you've got your core range of products that you're just making all the time. And that also allows you to predictably scale because you know, ⁓ when we have five more of these products, we need another developer or we need another ops manager or whatever it may be. But the key thing that I see is it allows you to show the value of what you're offering and allow the customer to understand it, which is you're saying there.
And think that's the hardest piece that I've seen agency owners try to figure out is that understanding actually we need to sell on the value, not on the technicality of what we can build and the features that we can add into it. They need to focus on more of the value and what all those features and technicalities are going to give you as a brand that's working with our agency. And how we've seen them get over it is more than not working with someone who's done it before. So working with a mentor, joining an agency peer group where they're going to go to
you know, a no holds barred boardroom session where you speak with other agency owners, talking about your problems, where you want to go and being shown real world experience. I mean, we do that a lot of our customers as well, where I've been working with agencies for 15 years. And so we've seen the ups, we've seen the downs, we've seen what's worked and what's not. So we can start to have that conversation with them and let them see what's possible. And then we'll typically direct them to an agency networking group or a peer support group or mentors who can then, you know, give them that.
hands-on experience to get them up to that next stage.
Matt Medeiros (06:00)
Yeah.