Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee Matthew Jackson
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson. Welcome to episode 39 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is Lee, and today we’ve got a really exciting podcast lined up for you. We’re going to be talking to a guy called Dan who’s going to be talking about where your next customer is coming from. So as agencies, we’re in the grind, we’re doing stuff all the time, and sometimes thinking about that sales pipeline is an afterthought. And working out who the next customer is going to be or how to generate some extra income, it’s just the last thought. And then it happens and you’re like, ah crap, what do I do next? Well, Listen to Dan, he’s got some great advice for us agencies on things that we can start to implement and look at with our businesses, and he’s also offering some really cool free information. So he’s got a free course that you’re gonna learn about that you can go ahead on there, and he’s also giving away a book. But you’ll find out nearer the end of the podcast how you can get your hands on that free book.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So enjoy the podcast. If you have any questions or you wanna talk about it, then head on over to the Facebook group. That’s LeeJacksonDev.com/Facebook. /Group. That’s going to redirect you to the Facebook group. It’s a great private group full of other web designers and WordPress developers, etc., and we’re all in there asking questions, sharing information, and having a good laugh. So come on, join us, let’s have a good time, and on with the show. Hello, this is Lee at the WP Innovator Podcast, and today we have in the house Mr. Dan Englander.
Dan Englander
Mate, you got it, man.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I got it.
Dan Englander
Yeah, yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
How are you, mate?
Dan Englander
I’m well, I’m well. How are you doing?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Uh, well, rumor— well, I’m all right, uh, but rumour has it you’ve been having some hot weather in New York.
Dan Englander
It’s cooled down finally, and, uh, yeah, so the sweltering blacktop, you know, dog days of New York summer, I think, are finally drawing back.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So you mean you’ve had to kind of retire the shorts now and you’re back in jeans?
Dan Englander
Oh no, not that far. I’m definitely still in shorts, so not that bad.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Saying that, I do know some people in England that wear shorts literally all year round. I’ve I don’t know if you get that out there.
Dan Englander
Uh, it’s rare. It’s rare in New York, but I think half of that is for fashion reasons.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Uh, yeah, no, no, I get that. That’s fine. I just don’t like showing my legs off, so I tend to try and wear jeans whenever I can. So anyway, guys, Dan, Dan Englander. I actually thought it was something like Englander or something, and I was really worried about pronouncing it wrong, but it’s actually Dan Englander, who’s American. That’s confusing.
Dan Englander
Yeah, exactly.
Lee Matthew Jackson
He’s the founder of Sales Schema, where he helps business owners and salespeople win more deals and grow their existing accounts. He’s also the author of Mastering Account Management and the B2B Sales Blueprint. And I did read that. So I’m going to hand over to you, mate, to just give everyone a bit of an introduction about yourself and all of that good stuff.
Dan Englander
Yeah, yeah. So like we said, I’m the founder of Sales Schema. And basically what I do there is we help businesses and specifically agencies more often than not win new business, grow their existing accounts. That usually means that I’m training sales teams, and that sort of thing. Yeah, and before that, I was the first employee at the animation studio Idea Rocket where we kind of like started from zero and I was managing the accounts and winning new business and doing all these sort of things ’cause it was a very small team and eventually, you know, the braggadocios, we got from zero to seven figures including dozens of Fortune 500s and then left in late 2014, wrote that book Mastering Account Management and kind of used that as the launchpad for the consultancy. Yeah, and you know, in all that time I’ve had the consultancy, I’ve really enjoyed working with creatives a lot and trying to convince them that they need to learn how to sell well in order to maintain their business. From the beginning, WordPress was what I used, what I launched everything on, and I love the sort of unlimited possibilities of it and just the sort of constraint, even if it’s a very small constraint.
Dan Englander
It sort of creates, it’s sort of like a form follows function sort of thing. So I’ve used WordPress to hone all sorts of ideas about how to position my business and so on. Definitely glad to be in that world now.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s really good. If someone ever says to me, “Oh, I find it limiting,” I’m going to say, “No, form follows function.” Yeah, yeah, that’s the classy way to make a great response. I like it. That’s so exciting. So I understand that you—
Dan Englander
You can use it to make any argument for any terrible thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, that’s true, actually. Yeah. I wonder if Donald Trump could just keep saying that.
Dan Englander
Just keep— yeah, that’s his textbook response to any criticism. Form follows function.
Lee Matthew Jackson
We better not get into politics. That is seriously nuts on Facebook. Like, if you have an opinion, it kind of goes crazy. So I’m getting worried. I better not share politics on WP Innovator or we may lose like, I don’t know, 50% of the listenership.
Dan Englander
So I don’t know if you’ll lose anyone, but I think we probably won’t offer anything valuable.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I’ve got no decent one. So how many years were you at Ideabox?
Dan Englander
Uh, Idearocket. So I was there from, um, no, no problem. So I was there from when we started. So that was basically, you know, late 2011 until late 2014. Yeah, and it was a really great experience because I had never done sales before, and I had basically been in a creative agency kind of pitching different things to big consumer brands and stuff. Wanted something new, and then kind of fell into sales, and didn’t really think of myself as a salesperson. I think probably in the beginning I thought it was kind of a dirty word to be selling people things. So, you know, my process was kind of stagnant, and I think it kind of resembles the process of a lot of beginning agencies that I talk to. You kind of get referred to by somebody or you’re lucky enough to kind of get an appointment and then you learn as much as you can, you put together a proposal, and then a lot of the times you just don’t really hear back from people because you don’t really understand what they need. I kind of kept on going through that process and realised that I had a problem and that I needed to kind of turn things around.
Dan Englander
I just started taking ownership over the idea of being in sales, went through some formal training, networked with lots of people, saw what a lot of people were doing, read tonnes of books, and then kind of slowly honed our process and got it together. Yeah, and to the point where we started winning bigger clients, we started winning Fortune 500s, we did the opener for the show Weeds for the 8th season, which was our big claim to fame for a while. Nice.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, I’d be riding on that one for the next 10 years.
Dan Englander
Yeah, we did definitely ride it, but it was worth riding.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Amazing. So, you say that sales was the dirty word kind of thing. We all have that concept, don’t we, of I’m not a salesperson. But at what point did you realise, no, actually I am a salesperson, and how did you define yourself as that? Because we all think of a salesperson as the sleazy cheesy guy, don’t we, who you wouldn’t really trust, slicked back hair with the briefcases at the front door, and he’s trying to sell you something that probably doesn’t work, and he doesn’t care about you necessarily, and he’s not necessarily got your best interests at heart, and we don’t like to be sold to, and we’ve all of these things. So how did you kind of break out of that, I don’t like this salesperson label, to, oh crap, actually I’m a salesperson, I can do this?
Dan Englander
What was that? [Speaker:RYAN] Yeah, I mean, it’s a good question. I think there’s probably different facets to the answer. I mean, the first thing that happened was things just weren’t going well, and I knew that we couldn’t just keep doing the same thing where I spin my wheels, you know, on these calls and these proposals only to have people never get back to us. And sometimes they would, but more often than not they wouldn’t, and we just wouldn’t know why. So it was kind of this black box. So first, just kind of knowing that there was a problem. Then second of all, getting help, getting perspective from a great sales trainer named Mike Ganzel here in New York. He really just kind of encouraged us to take ownership of that title and kind of realise that it’s not— you don’t have to be sleazy. You don’t have to— the other thing is sometimes people associate it with kind of being like a Philistine or like some kind of dummy or something, but out of everything I’ve done, I think there’s more cognitive challenge involved in sales and selling well than anything else. I think that was the second thing, is just kind of getting over it, you know, just realising it’s not all bad.
Dan Englander
And then the third thing is sort of understanding that a huge part of sales, I mean, people kind of have this stereotypical image of somebody pitching and talking a lot and having that be the centrepiece of it, but I think really it’s more about listening and asking good questions, and so that you can actually position yourself, whatever you sell, the right way to the right person and then not waste your time on somebody who’s not a fit. I think that’s, that’s probably the more important part.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I love the idea of taking ownership of the fact that you are in sales. That’s right, that’s such a great thing. So if you’re listening right now, just, just that phrase, take, you know, taking ownership, you know, you own your agency, you are responsible for bringing in those leads, converting those leads, or at least your team is, you know, and taking ownership of that title. And that was definitely something in my own, uh, yeah, I can, I can really kind of connect with that because at one point I just had to I have to look at myself and say, “I am in sales regardless of if I like the idea of being a salesperson. I now have to figure this out.” Exactly.
Dan Englander
In my experience, creatives and creative agencies have the hardest time with that because I think there’s something about putting your creative work out there and then having people either accept it or not accept it. I think a lot of the times creatives think of it in this very binary way. When really there’s a lot of education that has to, especially with something like a website, that has to go into that, and that’s basically sales. I mean, that’s getting people to the next stage and kind of helping them understand what it is that they’re actually getting from you, and I think when you’re dealing with a complex B2B product, there’s a lot that has to go into that, and I think creatives sometimes will just treat it in this very, like, you either like the work that’s on the portfolio or you don’t, and that was I think some head trash that I had early on and that you really have to get over.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s actually a tough area, that is, especially for some agencies where they actually have to pitch for work, so they’ll have to put work forward for free as part of a proposal, so they’ll actually have to do some designs and say, hey, this is what you could look like, and then they may potentially win the pitch as well, so that can be very, very time-consuming. Intensive and taxing.
Dan Englander
Yeah, yeah. And I think that that’s a, that’s a really good thing to bring up is spec work. Um, and you know, my opinion on spec work is that it’s, it’s a very select tool for very special people. It’s not something that you, you do for just anyone. Um, and I don’t think that that’s, that’s, you know, um, information that’s, uh, that’s not obvious already. But there’s a kind of a process you have to go through to make sure that somebody is really fitting for it. You know, they need to be able to afford you, you need to be talk— talking to a decision maker, or you at least understand how they’re going to be making a decision. They need to have some sort of legitimate challenge or need or desire for your product that, you know, substantiates them taking it on. I mean, they need to have a timeframe for getting it done, and if those things aren’t there, then I always encourage my clients to not do spec.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I mean, we as an agency don’t do spec, but I know a lot of agencies will have to because of the nature of the industry they’re in, but that’s really refreshing the way you’ve you just phrased that, because a lot of people— I mean, a lot of people manage to find ways to avoid doing the spec work, but there are certain projects they do. But just you defining it in that way, I think, really helps people break down.
Dan Englander
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And just take a step back quickly before— this is only going to be an XK project, is it really worth us speccing this? Is the client just filling up the numbers and sending it out to a load of agencies? Is there any realistic, you know, opportunity here for us to win this?
Dan Englander
Right.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Etc.
Dan Englander
And just to kind of validate your policy, because that’s kind of the one that we had at IdeaRocket too, was a no spec thing. I think that’s even more ideal. But I guess if you’re a small agency and you do have to be a little hungrier, at least have those building blocks in place if you are going to do spec, you know.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Now on your website, you are offering people a training course in helping them kind of learn the sales process and manage accounts, etc. Are these the sort of things that you could help people with?
Dan Englander
Them. Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly what we focus on in the course. I kind of like to give people different options. Some people would like to hire us and kind of have somebody to be with them and have a little more handholding. Other people just kind of are entrepreneurs and just kind of want to do it on their own and binge over a weekend on the material. So that’s kind of why we offer kind of a choose-your-own-adventure path. Yeah, in terms of that course, what I’ve Tried to do differently with that and also with our consultancy is I think a lot of the times, especially with agency owners, people will go off in different directions and they’ll win a particular client, you know, in a certain industry or vertical and then just try to win more of that particular niche, you know, be it like printing or manufacturing or whatever it may be. When, you know, there’s gonna be like one or two industries that are gonna perform better than all the rest and I think that those are the best to focus on because you really want to win these clients that are gonna be the ones that that can repurchase from you over and over again as opposed to just these one-off projects.
Dan Englander
But I think to do that and what I’ve tried to get across in the course and our offering is that you have to kind of set up that process of recurring business from the beginning as opposed to being left to the situation where you call somebody after you’ve made this amazing site and you hit them up a month later and then you just say, “Hey, how are you guys? How’s it going? Do you guys want to buy from us again?” because there’s, there’s not really any fluidity to that process. What I like to do is encourage clients to kind of have a debrief call after they’ve gone through a project, and then you really have to learn about other areas where they’re going to be experiencing pain around what you’ve just created for them. And I think the best way to do that is to find out how they’re going to be measuring success with it and then figure out if there are upsells or there’s a way for you to kind of work with them to build a case study or just a way for you to stay involved. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be them purchasing a whole new website or like a whole new flagship offering, but basically setting the expectation that the engagement is going to continue so you can help them beyond the initial project.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Again, that’s really refreshing because many web builds will simply be wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. You know, you’ve got your brief, you build the website, you deliver it online, you try and offer them some sort of support package because you’re telling them, hey, you got to keep WordPress up to date. Great, guys, and, and you need to keep in touch. And, and it kind of flat falls flat in its face. But the thing that jumped out at me was that word process. It’s actually a word I hate.
Dan Englander
Yeah, I think most of us.
Lee Matthew Jackson
But yeah, exactly. I, I actually love process. I hate the word because as kind of a guy that was stuck in big American corporate businesses years and years ago, and they always talked about process and rammed it down your throat so that you hated the word. But actually, right, putting those processes into place is is so essential and being able to have those follow-up calls. So you give people kind of a taste of that. I think you’re offering a free course initially?
Dan Englander
[Speaker:TYRONE] Yeah, there’s a free webinar on our site that people can cheque out. And then another goody at the end that I’ll mention that it’s just for your listeners. We won’t get caught up in that now. But yeah, I think that that’s a really good point because a lot of the times, people kind of, especially agencies, will get really caught up in just like the day-to-day and the trenches and then it’s almost like I’m so exhausted from this project that I’m fine with just kind of waving goodbye and then, you know, seeing you on— leaving you to your own devices. So that’s why it’s hard. But the thing that I think is a little bit kind of comforting is the idea that you don’t have to do this sort of follow-up process for everyone. You know, you’re going to pick the two industries or those whatever certain types of businesses that are most likely to repurchase, and then those are the ones you’re going to focus on the most. And then everyone else, Maybe that you kind of let marketing handle them, maybe you have a list, maybe you have some sort of autoresponder series, but the idea is that you’re focusing on just the sort of cream of the crop industries.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I sort of thought of that actually because I was just thinking— I’ve just had a break, so I’ve had a week’s holiday and I’ve been thinking about recurring revenue and kind of looking to existing clients to generate ongoing revenue and leads, etc., because that’s often something I forget about. I’m too busy looking for the next new client. And it kind of felt a bit overwhelming. I’m thinking, oh my gosh, that’s 70-odd people, actually nearly 100-odd people I need to connect with. But what you’ve just said there is pick the cream of the crop, and instantly I can create a list of top 10 clients that I would love to keep working with, and that seems far more achievable now.
Dan Englander
Yeah, exactly. And you’ll get surprised too when you start hitting up old clients. A lot of the times they’ll just say, oh yeah, we need a new site right now. Let’s talk. That sort of stuff happens, but first you have to kind of get back on their radar. And then other times, you know, it’s going to be more of a process and more about continuing the conversation. And I think there’s a lot of different ways to do that, and it can be a cognitive challenge, but I think the sort of question or the heuristic to always use is sort of like, what’s in it for them? You know, like, what am I giving them right now? Why should they talk to me? And I think the most intuitive thing to start with is just like, we want to see, you know, how the website is doing. We want to see what the results have been. And we want to be able to give you the advice that we’ve learned from working with similar companies since we last talked, you know, that sort of thing.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And that again is where it’s so essential or helpful to be picking a niche. I mean, one of the common topics we have on this podcast is niching, is being in a particular industry, having the experience, especially for web developers because they’ve got reusable code. But also you’re learning a crap tonne of stuff about lots of businesses in that industry, and you can give the benefit of that to to the next guys. So, you know, I’m in a situation and I know other people are in a situation where they’ve kind of had previous customers that have been awesome but we never really kept in touch now. So is it too late? Talk to us about that.
Dan Englander
It’s never too late, no. You mean to reach out to like a specific customer or just to start—
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, so I’ve got a top 10 in my list, you know, and I’ve probably not spoken to them for say 6 months.
Dan Englander
If anything, I think sometimes it’s easier to get the conversation again when it’s been a little bit longer because there’s probably things that have started to unravel a little bit more. Maybe there’s issues with the site or just other challenges that don’t have anything to do with the site that have now come up that they would need your help with. That doesn’t mean that I think it’s ideal to wait that long, but I think if anything, there’s more to talk about when more time goes by. The other thing is that you have done a lot more work in that interim, so you have more to talk about. To them about, you know, related clients you’ve worked with. So, uh, yeah, I think that that’s, that’s perfectly fine.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I suppose one of the things as well is even if the site is rocking and rolling and perfect, because obviously everyone who listens builds perfect sites because they’re awesome, but also the business needs change. So in 6 months’ time, there may be a requirement, say, in WooCommerce to have a completely different workflow process for kind of taking, selling products. So yeah, I guess having that conversation is is so essential. I mean, I was thinking the other day that I could maybe send out some sort of message to existing clients. This is when I was thinking of all 100, and I was like, oh man, do I offer them all like a free site review or something along those lines? But again, it seemed like quite a big facing. That’s like 100 clients there, free site reviews. But again, you know, that’s up to you.
Dan Englander
I think that another good way to kind of choose who you go after is figure out who’s been most responsive, you know, when you’ve followed up with questions, or if you have done any follow-up already, figuring out who does have the most pain. So kind of prioritising pain over other things, because that’s going to be somebody who’s going to be more likely to sign on with you again. Because after all, you’ve already done all the hard work. You know, you’ve built their trust, you’ve gotten them as a lead, there’s mutual understanding. So all you have to do is basically find some sort of challenge that you can solve, and then you’re back in there. So you can kind of prioritise that over, over other things that might seem like they’re important. I, I think that that will get you— yeah, get you better results sooner.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome. All right, so picture this: we’re, we’re agencies, we’re really busy, uh, we’re working on the product a lot of the time. So, you know, there may be a big website, it’s taking several months, there’s quite a lot of people on it. We’re small agencies, there may be 3 or 4 of us, and for example, me, I’m the sales guy and one of the developers as well.
Dan Englander
Sure.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And you kind of at times keep your eye more on the project rather than on the pipeline, etc. And you fall into this area of, um, you wake up one morning and you’re like, oh crap, where are my next set of sales coming from? What would be your advice to people in that situation?
Dan Englander
Yeah, I didn’t mean to cut you off. Yes, very, very common problem and one that I’ve dealt with firsthand. Um, and the first is just kind of, uh, accept— acknowledging the fact that you’re always going to be able to move heaven and earth to get what you need for your client. I think that you’re always going to be able to delegate things. You’re going to find a way to get it done. But sales, you’re not going to be able to make happen out of thin air. There’s a lot more that has to go into it, and the results of your sales process are based on things you did or didn’t do weeks or months prior. So in order to do that, you really got to systematise it, and I know that process and systems sound boring. And they’re flowing, they’re great. And the idea is that you’re gonna wanna be doing some sort of sales push at least once a day. And for me personally, you know, it was in the morning. So that means that I kept a constraint and when I got into the office, I was doing the sales calls, I was doing outbound emails, I was doing the follow-up process that we just talked about, you know, at the beginning of the day and I would do that every day and clients weren’t gonna be able to get in touch with me for that hour or hour and a half or whatever it may be.
Dan Englander
And I think that a lot of the times, you know, especially with creative shops, They set the expectation either by implication or overtly that clients are going to be able to get in touch with them at all hours of the day, and then it makes it impossible to do anything else. But the thing is, being responsive doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re always on call like an emergency room doctor. You can kind of find a happy medium where you do block off time for certain things. Discipline, I think, is a muscle. I think once you start doing it, it’s going to get easier and easier, and you’re going to be able to— and people will get the idea. People will start to understand I can’t get in touch with them right now. That’s okay. The world’s probably not going to blow up because of it.
Lee Matthew Jackson
One book that really helped me with that was The 4-Hour Workweek. And slowly over the last year, I’ve been training my customers to understand that I’ll be checking email at specific times in a day, so they’re not going to get an instant response. And if they call the office, they’re very likely to get one of my colleagues or the main reception call desk. and they all have to click on Calendly links now to book a 30-minute call with me, you know, in 24 hours’ time from now. And if they’re in a contract and it’s an emergency, they’re not going to get me direct anyway. They’re going to be going straight through to the support desk. But that’s taken the last year to kind of put all of that in place because it was what you described where I was available all hours of the day. That was my life like a year ago and I hated it.
Dan Englander
Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s terrific. And you sound like you’re, you’re miles ahead of many of the, the agencies that are kind of earlier on that I’ve worked with. So that’s great. I think it’s tough, you know, at first it’s tough to— because you think that people are going to get irate or fire you at the first, you know, lag time of an hour or something. But that rarely happens.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I think, I think part of that as well comes from, for me anyway, personally, it comes from being in a corporate background where you have management and they kind of expect you to be super responsive and you’re worried about getting fired. And then, you know, we then kind of take that into our business. And when we’re working with our clients, we think we have to be always contactable. Yeah, it’s weird.
Dan Englander
It’s— sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say it’s weird how that manifests because I call that with my friends, I call that the Shawshank Redemption syndrome. You know, if you see where there’s this part in the movie where he gets out of jail or Morgan Freeman’s character does and he asks if he gets a job bagging groceries and he’s always asking his boss if he can go to the bathroom. He’s just like, no, you’re not in prison anymore. You can just go to the bathroom. It’s sort of the same idea, you know, with me and yourself launching new businesses is sometimes we have to— there’s still remnants of that. There’s residual effects of working in a 9-to-5 office that you have to kind of, um, yeah, you have to rid yourself of over time.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So, so we’ve thrown out a couple of words here like systemize and processes. Yeah, both those really feel like loaded words, especially to the agency owner who is frantically busy all the time. So what kind of words of comfort and inspiration would you give to that person who’s like, “What? I’ve got to do processes? I’ve got to systemize?
Dan Englander
Ah!” Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, just know that you’re not going to have to apply the systems to all of your clients overnight. You can start off with experiments and do things on a smaller level until you see that they’re working and then get off and running. To a bigger level. The other thing is that I think that’s oftentimes what I see is that people will wait too long to get help with things and they think that they have to reach some goal before they are able to delegate things or in order to get— before they can get help. I think it’s sort of the opposite. I think you should get help and delegate things in order to reach the goal, not the other way around. I think that’s important too. Realising that delegation is just yet another muscle that you have to build, and it helps if you can start building it earlier because then you’re going to be able to think of not just how can I actually do this, but how can I get this off my plate sooner.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I think as well then, I mean, delegation is important for agencies, especially when we’re building a, say, a complicated WordPress website and we need someone to have, you know, just get a freelancer in who’s got a specialism in a certain area who can do something very quick. But also, I’m thinking of this you know, for a business like mine, I think we should approach you as, you know, Sales Schema to help us create those processes, um, you know, and help us get through it. Because I don’t have all the knowledge that you guys have experienced over the years with the agencies. So it’s gonna give me a, a quick boost to connect with you guys and have you help me. For example, I spoke just— I think it was 2 episodes ago, we actually had Dan Connors in to help us with our project management, to actually teach us and train us how to manage projects using you know, Gantt charts and visualising multiple projects so that we could actually really start to set clients’ expectations. And because we had him in, rather than us trying to learn that over a year and slowly do that over a year, we were actually able to kind of delegate that, hey, teach us project management please, in a few hours.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And oh my gosh, the result of that was immense. So I, I think, and you’re probably going to agree here at this point, that if someone is thinking, right, I, I really want to start to apply some sort of sales processes, um, some onboarding processes, some after, you know, after site delivery processes, etc., that they could connect with you guys, and you, I’m sure, will be very happy to help them and save them many hours.
Dan Englander
Absolutely. Yeah, that’s, that’s what we go for.
Lee Matthew Jackson
There you go. That was my sales pitch for you. So guys, if you’re thinking about this right now and you think I have anything left to say, if I, I think I need to talk to, uh, then get on to sales-schema.com. There is the free course obviously available on there. There and go and cheque out. He’s a very handsome chap as well. He’s got quite a funny video that made me laugh. He’s like, click on the button. Uh, it’s going to be either over there or, uh, somewhere obvious.
Dan Englander
Thank you, sir.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So I’ll tell you, the button, the button is very obvious. I, I, it’s, it’s a blue button, just in case it wasn’t that obvious to you.
Dan Englander
Yes, yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
SalesSchema.com. So you mentioned really early on there that you’re a WordPress user, so obviously I applaud Well done.
Dan Englander
Yeah, well, I’d love to geek out on WordPress. Why the hell not? Yeah, it’s more exciting than sales to me sometimes.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So what’s been, uh, what’s been your, uh, your kind of go-to plugin?
Dan Englander
Or so exciting? Lately I’ve been having a lot of fun with Thrive Themes, um, which is, which is great. And I experimented with LeadPages and all sorts of other stuff, but I just, I love how kind of drag-and-drop fun Thrive Themes is, but there’s still templates all ready to go, um, and it just It’s just so thoughtful, everything about it. And it’s run by— I think it’s run out of Budapest. I wish I knew the guy’s name. He’s Scandinavian.
Lee Matthew Jackson
He’s got a great accent if you just watch his videos.
Dan Englander
Yeah, he’s like a diehard villain or something.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, or like the Grolsch adverts. I don’t know if you remember those, Sabia.
Dan Englander
What’s that?
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, if people are in the UK, they’ll remember these Grolsch adverts with this guy who was like, stop, it’s not ready yet. It should be longer for a fuller taste. I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that. Is that copyright or trademark? I don’t know.
Dan Englander
Oh yeah, we might get sued.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Maybe I should, yeah. I’ll blame you.
Dan Englander
Yeah, that’s fine. He made me do it. Yeah, so I’ve been having fun with that. And then ConvertKit has been amazing. I think that everything they do is just like so clean and elegant and it just ties in so well with everything. So I’m a big, I sing their praises everywhere I go.
Lee Matthew Jackson
So are you using them in conjunction? Just for people, Thrive Themes, I presume you’re talking about the landing page builder that they have?
Dan Englander
Yes, exactly. Thrive Themes for landing pages and the little— I’m blanking on the industry term, but the pop-ups and stuff, the boxes basically. And then that in conjunction with ConvertKit, which is kind of like a MailChimp competitor. But I just think that the amount of automation that’s there is so much for how low the cost is. Halfway to buying something like Infusionsoft, but without anywhere near that sort of spend or that sort of complexity.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, I remember myself, I did have a go with ConvertKit very early on, and I didn’t really get on with it very well. I’ve ended up going with ActiveCampaign, so that’s what we use. But just kind of to help people understand how you’re using WordPress and kind of converting those leads, what are you doing with ConvertKit? Are you using it simply as building up a list and then sending them one email, or have you got, have you actually created some processes or some funnels inside of ConvertKit?
Dan Englander
Yes, more processes. So, yeah, what I like to do is I don’t like to get too crazy with it until I have enough data to actually work with, so that’s kind of an ongoing process, you know. But basically, yeah, I use it for autoresponders, so people will opt into my list via different lead magnets I have. One of them is the free course and webinar, like you’ll see if you go to my to my site. And then others are sort of like resource opt-ins for my book. So that’s a huge way that I use to generate my list is books on Amazon. So there’s sort of resource counterparts associated with that and people will opt in. So then that’s— I’ll use ConvertKit to sort of tag people, kind of create cohorts and everything, and then get them into my different autoresponder sequences. And then occasionally I’ll do blasts and stuff when I launch different different, the course or the consulting offering.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I imagine that— I mean, this was a year ago when I first looked at it. I think it was quite new then because there’s quite an interesting story. Is ConvertKit the one that I think a guy called Nathan launched in like 6 months?
Dan Englander
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that’s the one.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, so I think I took it on when it was quite early and it still felt a little bit buggy and unfinished. So yeah, why I kind of never settled with it at the time. But I’m imagining—
Dan Englander
yeah, you just got on too early. You probably also bought like a Calico Vision and Sega Dreamcast and all these other, like, yeah, that’s your problem.
Lee Matthew Jackson
We still have a Sega Master System.
Dan Englander
Early adopter problem. What’s that?
Lee Matthew Jackson
I still have a Sega Master System. It’s in the attic, but yeah. Ah, then were the days.
Dan Englander
Yeah, yeah, that was such an underrated system though when it came out. Yeah, the Dreamcast. You had the little screen on the controller so you could plan your football plays without your phone.
Lee Matthew Jackson
You can still buy the Dreamcast. There’s a shop down the road from here and they’re selling Dreamcast games and old Dreamcast boxes as well. It’s, I mean, there’s been a rise recently. We are totally off topic now, but there’s been, there’s been a rise, hasn’t there? I’ve seen of retro gaming and I’ve found a whole load of cool new retro gaming podcasts and I’m just like reliving my youth, but I’m also like living the youth of people slightly older than me because I’m like, oh my gosh, you are playing what now?
Dan Englander
Right.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Well, this is cool. I never heard of this.
Dan Englander
And you can just get anything. I mean, over, over the, over like, you know, the Xbox Live or whatever system. Any game is there. So it’s, it’s, it’s pretty, there’s a real, like, my brothers turned me onto it, but there’s a real indie game renaissance. There’s always really spooky, crazy games. So anyway, major digression.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No, no, but that’s good. And, and maybe, maybe I should start a new podcast as well about retro games.
Dan Englander
I was just thinking that.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Just an idea.
Dan Englander
Yeah. Let’s just do it right now. Let’s jump ship.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Hi and welcome to the Dan and Lee Retro Gaming Show.
Dan Englander
I’m sure that doesn’t exist, right? There’s probably no gaming podcast. I’m sure that they wouldn’t to do that. I’m sure there’s probably dozens of dozens of those.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Epic. So one thing we love people to go away from any podcast is obviously they’ve come away with a whole lot of inspiration. You’ve mentioned a whole lot of really exciting things and maybe some scary things as well, but it’s going to resonate with people and think, oh man, I’ve got to, I need to kind of review where I’m at. I need to look at these things. But is there kind of one piece of advice that you would give people? It’s like maybe an action that they could start to do that you you think is going to make a real difference and help them on their journey.
Dan Englander
Right, and I hope it’s not too abstract because I did give this some thought. I think for me the biggest thing has been thinking of it like shipping. Like whenever you do something, get it out there to the public sooner rather than later even if it’s scarier. That way that it’s kind of out there producing results for you, be it leads or income or impressions or whatever it may be sooner rather than later even if it’s not It’s not perfect, just kind of get it out there. And I even take that to something as everyday and mundane as kind of like planning out, you know, what I’m doing with my business in a week. I’ll send those plans to a small group of friends who also own businesses, you know, just to keep me accountable or even to get feedback sometimes. So I think just kind of always thinking of things in that sort of shipping mindset has been great.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s really good. Would you agree, and you can shut me down if you you want, that that should be the same to the processes and, you know, of your business. You need, like, start thinking about them, start experimenting with them now, rather than thinking I need to sit and write a 50-page document that will be perfect before—
Dan Englander
Yeah, apply it. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s, that’s exactly right. And, you know, I, I think starting with— and this isn’t my idea, this is my, my friend Nate Smith of— he has a company called 80/20 Marketing. But it’s basically like the big dumb ideas, you know, or if somebody had twice— but they were twice as greedy and half as smart as you, what would they do right now? I think that’s kind of a good heuristic.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s epic. Mate, you’ve been incredible. I feel encouraged because I do have a few processes. I also feel very I’m kind of conscious that there are some big gaping holes, especially in the aftercare process for me. So, you know, I’ve got a great kind of onboarding process, but there is this gap. And I was thinking, like I said, I was thinking about it during the holiday, like, what am I doing with existing clients? You know, I, I’m quite good at winning new business, but there’s this whole kind of area here. So I’m definitely going to be going through your free course, which is at [email protected]. So I appreciate you putting that out. But I understand that you’ve got something else for people who are in the same boat as me that you would like to offer to listeners. What would that be?
Dan Englander
Yes, absolutely. So I’d like to give your listeners my first book, which is still the one that I think ties into this the most. It’s called Mastering Account Management: 102 Steps for Increasing Customers— excuse me, Increasing Sales, Serving Your Customers Better and Working Less. Yeah, and it’s basically, you know, just kind of a chicken soup for the account manager’s soul style book, and it’s very bite-sized, so I think it ties directly twin, what we’re talking about, so it should be good. And they can go to get that at sales-schema.com/wp-innovators.
Lee Matthew Jackson
That’s awesome. So that will be sales-schema.com/wp-innovator. We’ll make sure we get that in the show notes as well. Speaking of show notes, mate, can you let us know the best ways of connecting with you, and then we’ll give you a high five.
Dan Englander
Yeah, absolutely. So my site sales-schema.com is a good place. If anybody wants to shoot me an email, it’s just my name, Dan. Saleskima.com.
Lee Matthew Jackson
And are you on the Twittersphere or the Facebook?
Dan Englander
Oh yes, the Twittersphere. I am on Twitter at, uh, Dan’s Palace is the, is the handle.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Dan’s Palace, that is a really cool handle. Is that like a memory palace?
Dan Englander
Yeah, it’s just the palace of my own, you know, my own creation.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Yeah, that’s so deep.
Dan Englander
Thank you, I try.
Lee Matthew Jackson
I love it.
Dan Englander
Um, and that’s enough social channels, I think, for people to juggle.
Lee Matthew Jackson
No worries. So saleskima.com and and @danspalace. We’ll get those as well in the notes. Mate, it’s been an absolute pleasure learning from you and kind of getting these ideas for my own business. And I’m pretty sure everybody who’s listening are all going crazy with excitement and plans. And I’m sure you’re going to get a load of people hitting you up. So that’s awesome. Thank you as well for the free gift. That’s amazing. That’s a $10 value for free. So that’s amazing. So high five to you there. And take care of yourself. Have a freaking awesome day, mate.
Dan Englander
Awesome. Thanks so much, Lee. It’s been great.
Lee Matthew Jackson
Take care. So I’m sure you’ll agree that was an invaluable episode, and my gosh, the things he was talking about, I was like, I really need to sort that out. I need to think about this a bit more. So I’ve gone ahead and I’ve filled in that form to get hold of his free book, and I’m gonna be going through that course as well on his website. Remember that’s sales-schema.com. So I really want to extend that invite to the Facebook group. It’s a really cool place, a safe environment where we can all discuss things that are on our mind, ask questions about our agencies, and help each other out. So that’s leejaxondev.com/group, or if you head on over to Facebook, just type in WP Innovator and go to groups, and we will be there. Request membership, me and Larissa will let you in, in as soon as we possibly can, and that’s probably going to be quite quick because I live on Facebook. Really looking forward to meeting you over there. Looking forward to seeing you in next week’s episode, and until then, have a freaking awesome week and keep innovating.
