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:
Hi, and welcome to the WP Innovator
Lee Matthew Jackson:
podcast, the WordPress podcast for design and web agencies.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Let’s make WordPress work for your business.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hi, and welcome to episode 23 of the WP Innovator podcast. This is Lee, and welcome to. And today we have Heather Haven Wood. She is a business guru and has been absolutely fascinating to talk to. This is definitely up there with one of my favorite episodes. And she unpacks how to sell, but also gives us an amazing visual into how agencies work, into how websites should be built. So I’m not going to spoil it. I’m going to let you go ahead and listen.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Before we do, though, come and meet us all over at the Facebook group. It’s growing and it’s at leejacksondev.com group or tap in WP Innovator into Facebook and you’ll find us. Be great to meet you there. Without further ado, on with the show.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hi, this is your host, Lee, and I am here with Heather Haven Wood today. Heather, how are you doing?
Heather Havenwood:
I’m good.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We had a really funny conversation just before we started recording the podcast.
Heather Havenwood:
I’m on the other side of the pond.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly. Do you want to just fill us in? What. What amused you the other day?
Heather Havenwood:
So, okay, so I have just been grown aware of this thing called the Parliament in the uk and I find it hilarious because here in the Congress of America, we would never have people yelling and calling like, dodgy Obama. But there was a guy, I guess, who walked in, he goes, I call him Dodgy Dave. And the main dude, I guess the speake was very upset. He’s like, order. Order. I ask him to please not call Dave that word. And they’re like, what’s that? What? The one that starts with the deed, ends with a Y. And then he gives this guy the opportunity to stand back up.
Heather Havenwood:
He stands back up. He’s this old dude, right? Which I absolutely love. And he’s just like, ah, stand by. Order that it is Dodgy Dave. And they go, we kick you out. And he kicks out. And I’m just laughing because that would never happen in Congress because if it did, we would have kicked, like, Obama out and Hillary out and like all these other people out. But we don’t do that.
Heather Havenwood:
We let everyone, like, talk, right? So we just found it funny. Do not call him order.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So now and again, we’re going to have someone yelling order throughout the podcast
Heather Havenwood:
because the favorite part of it is we have this gavel here in the United States, right? All the judges and the Speakers have this big gavels, like it’s really loud. They don’t have that there. They just have order. And I was laughing in tears because I’m like, that is the funniest. And everyone, they’re not listening to him, right? He’s like, he’s like, I’m trying to reign in cats, you know, and so I was laughing because here in the United States, we never have that. So, yes, that’s pure entertainment. By the way, who needs a Kardashian,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
please, to know there’s a lot of American listeners as well. So what we’ll do is I think we need to share a YouTube video so those in America can be. I mean, we all know about it. In the uk, it was on tv. It was huge news, Hugh.
Heather Havenwood:
It’s pure entertainment. It was on Fox News here. And the guy, Varney, and Varney is a, you know, guy who, in Fox News, he’s actually from the other side of the pond. So he’s got the accent, but he, he’s here in the United States and so he’s the one that showed it. And he’s laughing in tears because he’s like, oh, my God, I missed that so much, you know, And I’m like, I had no idea that you guys were so entertaining in the empowerment.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We’re cool.
Heather Havenwood:
Dodgy Dave.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Dodgy Dave.
Heather Havenwood:
I’m like, that’s not a very bad. Is that a bad word over there? Dodgy?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Totally not. But I think, I think it’s more the idea of he was suggesting that David Cameron is not an upstanding man.
Heather Havenwood:
Not upstanding boy. Okay. Yeah. Okay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, can I compliment you as well on your very impressive English accent? So Heather is obviously, as you can tell, an amazing impressionist. And when she’s not entertaining people with a fantastic impressions of Parliament in the U of the K. She’s also an amazing business coach, she’s an author. She’s an all round incredible person who knows how to help people grow their business. And that’s why I wanted to get you on the podcast today. You reached out to me so excited when you did because this is the sort of thing that people have fed back to me. They really want to know how to grow their business. We’re all business owners, agency owners, et cetera, and we all have that common thread.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
How do we grow our business? We’ve come in as technicians. We know how to do the work, we know how to do, but how can we kind of see that bigger picture? So Heather is the. That perfect person that we can talk to. So before we kind of crack on with all that, Heather, it would be really cool just to find out a little bit about yourself. So can you give us like a kind of a short history of who you are, kind of what you’ve been up to, your hobbies, all sorts of stuff like that. And let’s unpack this. This crazy American lady. I’m joking.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah. Okay, so you know, here’s the bottom line. So I’ve been in direct response marketing world since 2001 and I got into it on accident. A fun story there, but really I got into the business of teaching people how to buy and sell houses in here in America. And, and I learned the art of salesmanship in front of a room, not behind a computer. At 2001 I travel the country to 350 events that kind of gave me my doorway into direct response marketing. What is direct response marketing? It’s not advertising, it’s a direct response. What that means is you send people to something and you want them to buy something.
Heather Havenwood:
That’s the bottom line. Okay. They make some kind of raising their hand or lead, opt in or hey I’m interested or trial offer, whatever the heck it is. They make an action around something, okay, that’s direct response versus like flipping the page of a magazine. So got my interest in there. And then back in 2004, 2005, I actually had the opportunity to build an online business from zero to million dollars. And that’s, that’s still going on today. However, through that timeframe I’ve learned the art of business partners and what to pick and not to pick.
Heather Havenwood:
A business partnership’s been interesting and I built many businesses since then. Today what I work on today is I have four online businesses. I do do coaching for people. It’s very hand selected. Cause that’s, it’s not everything I do. I have a supplement business online e2lab. I, I have a dating business teaching men how to date women through information marketing. If I, if I said my expertise right now it’s really in the information marketing business specifically and email marketing.
Heather Havenwood:
So I, and sales, like I’m a salesperson, right? Copywriting, sales. How do you sell online? And I think people forget that because as an agency they’re into like what do we build and like the content marketing. But they forgot that the whole point is to sell. Sell. Right. So that’s what I work with people on is how do you sell nowadays? Because the old times you would, you know, you do the billboard or you would do the yellow Pages. I don’t know if you had those yellow pages, those big books. Right.
Heather Havenwood:
And it’s old school, right? Okay, yeah, we do have those too. I use them as a doorstop. But we still have those. I mean, they’re just not as, you know, what we do anymore. We used to have a thing called mail. Remember that mail thing? You go to the mailbox, not email. So all these ways are old school, direct response ways of selling. It’s just that nowadays it’s shifted to this thing called online.
Heather Havenwood:
Right. With different modalities. But if I would say that what I do and what my expertise is, is sales. Sales online through communication. Yeah, yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And of course, as well, people working with the, with agencies, they kind of expect an agency to know everything about online sales, online marketing, etc.
Heather Havenwood:
They don’t.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly. Because, you know, we’ve come, and I’ll admit for myself, you know, I’ve come from a development background. Many people listening have come maybe from a print background as well. So, you know, we are technicians, like in the E Myth book, where the technicians, we know how to do the product, but we’ve never really. And we perhaps know the old school way of marketing as well, you know, which would be, you know, mass letters out to people. And I, you know, I remember 10 years ago, I was still sending out big letter campaigns to people and getting crickets back, you know, trying to work out how can I sell my product, etc.
Heather Havenwood:
So let me, let me explain this. I think that, I think everyone can understand, so especially across, across the pond. I have to give you a hard time. Across the pond, across the pond.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Hot dog, go for it. That was my effort.
Heather Havenwood:
Well, all the, you know, we all have houses, right? And we all have, you know, we call them realtors. Do you call them realtors? People that sell.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We call them estate agents over here.
Heather Havenwood:
Okay, great. Agents. That’s a good word. They all age. Real estate agents. Okay, so think of a old school right house. You have a builder, right? The builder or the architect. And the architect gives the.
Heather Havenwood:
The design to the builder. The builder. And the general contractor, or the builder actually has. Hires a general contractor. And the general contractor then goes out to the team, like all the people. The guy who does the plumbing, the guy who does electrician, the guy who does the woodwork and the framing. Like it’s all separate pieces. Usually the electrician’s not doing the framing and the framers not doing the plumbing.
Heather Havenwood:
Okay. Do you understand? And then after the house is all prettied, then the agent sells It. Okay, see, in web world, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. But we mix it. You try to become the agent and the plumber or the agent and the plumber and the electrician and the builder. And you can’t. Right? So the architect in our world is like the. The designer, right? The designer is not usually a builder.
Heather Havenwood:
A lot of people try to make the designer the builder. And you probably speak to that, right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
And then you have a builder. They’re. They’re building out the site, right? The making things work, the functionality. Then you have the piece inside of that. People. Some people, you have programmer to go even deep. If there’s like a context of the software that makes things work. Right? The details, the program or the CSE crap, blah, blah, blah.
Heather Havenwood:
All the details. All right? And then once it’s all prettied, then you have someone like myself or a copywriter that sells the product. Service people forget that. Okay? Now, as a web agency, you need to have a salesperson. And what happens is the person who’s. Who. Who is really good at building, they become the salesperson. Wrong answer.
Heather Havenwood:
Or the builder needs to learn sales. So if you look at the model of how housing is like, right? Because it’s structured perfectly, the real estate agent doesn’t know anything about building at all. They just know. Look at the beautiful window. Isn’t it gorgeous? Right? It’s so amazing.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Spacious.
Heather Havenwood:
Guy got to buy this house.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Look at the opportunities you have here, right?
Heather Havenwood:
The neighbors are amazing. Right? Okay. So you have to like, you have to segment it out. And unfortunately, because I would call the digital marketing agent, digital marketing world is. It’s a baby. It’s not been around decades here, guys. It’s not. It’s a baby.
Heather Havenwood:
And so it hasn’t really grown up and matured yet. The real estate industry’s matured where it’s very segmented, right? And everyone knows their roles and their jobs. Same thing with the record industry. It’s very segmented. You have the agents and you have the producer and then you have the artist. Right. It’s all over. Segment.
Heather Havenwood:
The web world hasn’t grown up as much yet. Everyone’s kind of mushing together. So what I would say to you is you have to what I call un. Collapse a bunch of stuff and start to become a salesperson or hire a salesperson or find someone who’s in your group that’s the salesperson. Right. And become sales. Does that make sense?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Such a good picture as well. I’ve used a very Similar picture myself. And I’ve tried to explain to people what I do because people often. Because my business, I actually just do the build. So I’m the builder part of your entire picture. And then a lot of my clients are actually the designers. So they’ll do the design. They’ll then outsource to me the builder where I’ll do the build.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So that’s the CSS code, all that sort of stuff to make it kind of functional. And then it’ll actually go back to them for kind of, you know, the sales process and helping the client as well with the site. But, you know, that’s kind of where I’ve established my own business suites, but just as the builder. But at the same time, I’ve been having to learn sales. Like, I can’t believe, you know, because I’ve always been a coder, but then suddenly, hey, wait a minute. I have this entire business where I’ve got a pipeline to look after and I’ve got to learn all of this sort of stuff. And it’s. I’ll tell you what, it’s been a.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s been an eye opener.
Heather Havenwood:
It is an eye opener, but if you segment it out and collapse it so much and also kind of what I call make it wrong, it’s going to be able to be easier for you. Like, oh, okay. You know, putting my builder hat on. Putting my sales hat on. It makes sense. So the architect in the real estate example, as is a kind of designer. And many times the architect works with the. With the owner.
Heather Havenwood:
Right? That happens a lot. Especially the owners building their own house. They’re working with the owner directly. And many times the head builder does come into conversation about it, like, well, I got architect. You want that wall there, but that ain’t gonna happen. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, good luck with that. Ain’t gonna happen. Right.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Or, you know, all the time, you
Heather Havenwood:
want to use that wood. Good luck with that. The price is like quadruple what you think? Yeah, right. So it’s the builder’s job to come in and kind of become that technical side. Right. And it’s architect’s job to, like, design it. Pretty, right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
So I, I want to bring that up because lots of times when my experience with agencies and I’ve had a lot of experiences lately just because I’m in the a.m. in the process of building out a bunch of stuff. So I’m going out to agencies and having all these conversations, and I find it fascinating because I’m like, okay, you’re not selling me. You’re talking technical. And I don’t want to, I want to hear the result. I want to hear what the strategy. I don’t necessarily, necessarily want you to teach me what you’re going to build. Right.
Heather Havenwood:
I want to know it’s going to be a solid work. I know it’s me functional. I want to know it’s been pretty, it’s going to last me 20 years kind of thing. Right. So you want to sell that piece that they want to hear. Not necessarily all the tiny little details. And that’s the challenge, I think that web agencies have.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I would totally agree. And I’m sure people listening right now are probably nodding their head or being made to think kind of, you know, wider. It’s an aha moment I had for myself, you know, a while back. I was, you know, I wasn’t selling. I was talking tech to people and people just had no idea what I was saying.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, you talked real to me.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly. I know what I’m talking about, but they don’t.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, Another example of this that I had to understand. It took me a while to understand. So there was a time in my life between 2001, 2004, 5, 6, I traveled the country and I did the United States and I did seminars, right? So I travel the country and do all these real estate seminars where we fly into a city and we did six, six, 90 minute presentations, basically pitches every single week and we fly to another city the next week. And I learned very quickly. So here’s what we would sell. We’d sell it to another seminar, right? Three day event. Here’s what I learned. The people that were the speakers at the three day event were teachers.
Heather Havenwood:
A teacher explains in detail and teaches the concept. Okay, teachers suck at selling. Suck. They suck. And I mean that in a lovely way because a salesperson, like a real hard salesperson, like that’s just who they are. Suck at teaching. They do. So we would test it, right? Because there’d be a guy in the front of the room we call the pitch man, and he’d be like, oh, I really want to teach.
Heather Havenwood:
And they put him in the back. They put him in the three day event. Oh my God, he was horrible. People complainers, complaining, all these complaints of customers. Because when you’re at the three day event, at that point you want the details, you want to understand how to do something, right? But when you’re in the front of the room, when you’re in a 90 minute presentation, all you want is to be sold and at that point, you want to understand what the results are going to get. You understand the price, the structure at the end of those three day events. What am I going to get? Okay, great. Either buy or sell or not.
Heather Havenwood:
And a pitch person sucks at selling. But we also had great teachers. I mean, these people loved these teachers. They were like the best. And we put them in the, in the front part. Oh, my God. They want to teach. They can’t understand.
Heather Havenwood:
What do you mean, stop teaching? We tell them, stop teaching, stop teaching, stop teaching. You can’t teach and sell. You can communicate and sell, but teaching and selling is not going to work, Right? So it’s. I want you to understand that because as a builder yourself, you might go into teaching mode. Totally, Right? Hands up, right? You’re teaching them how to do SES scss, right? And they’re like, I don’t want to know. Is it going to work? Right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
They’re like, I just want to buy your expertise. I don’t want you to teach me expertise. I want you to share with me that, that I can trust you, that I can feel like you’re going to do what you say you’re going to do. I want to feel like my money is going to get me an roi. If you can share that, sharing is different than teaching. If you can share that, then you’re selling. Then you can increase, you know, get the money, what I call, get the contract, right? So sharing is not teaching and teaching is not selling. So you want to share what your results are going to be for them and they’re going to purchase your expertise.
Heather Havenwood:
That is your time or your contract. So that’s the best way to break it down. Did I, did I help you?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That was fantastic. I’m trying to write kind of quietly on my keyboard notes as we go
Heather Havenwood:
so that I know, well, you’re recording this, right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But if I don’t, if I don’t physically write whilst I’m learning it at the same time.
Heather Havenwood:
Oh, okay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It does not stick even if I listen back to this. It’s nuts, really. Now that is utterly fantastic. Now, I mean, what sort of, sort of advice? So for people, you know, who are saying, yeah, all right, I’ve seen myself in that room. I’ve been at a tender meeting, you know. So we have something called Tenders in the uk. I’m not sure if it’s called the same thing over there. So you’ll, you’ll reply to a tender, something goes out, hey, we’ve got a website opportunity here.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
We want to we want to achieve all of these wonderful things and this is the sort of budget, etc. So come along and present to us what you can do, you know, for us, etc. And many agencies will go into very much that teaching mode. So what sort of advice would you have for, you know, agencies, business owners who are going to approach that tender, how to get out of that kind of teaching mindset? What kind of tips would you give to people?
Heather Havenwood:
So here’s what I would say to that. Because in their brain they’re like, how do I stop teaching? Isn’t that what they want? Okay, pull it back. So you got what I call pull it back and pull it up. And when you pull it back and up, you’re going to go big picture, go bigger picture. And if you do go deep, right? If you go deep, go only like 2 inches deep, you don’t go 10, right? So big picture, bigger picture result, big strategy, right? And then if you go. If they have questions, you go 2 inches deep. Let me give you example. So if someone’s like, talk to us about the fit, you know, you say Facebook strategy.
Heather Havenwood:
It’s very broad. Facebook. Tell me more about that. Like what exactly you’re going to do. Well, what we’re going to do is one, we’re going to make sure that the pixel that is on Facebook is set up in a certain way so we can target market best. One, two, we’re going to get clear on your target markets. We’re going only going after your target market on paid advertising on. And our boost advertising.
Heather Havenwood:
And we’re. Right, right. And then the third thing we’re doing is make sure we have a light campaign. I don’t know, like that I’m making that up, right. So you can do it your own way. They’re clear on that. Okay. They’re going to do a, like, campaign.
Heather Havenwood:
They’re going to do a regular campaign and they’re going to do a boost campaign. Okay.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s just very top level as well.
Heather Havenwood:
It’s still top level. Now, for a person that’s truly into Facebook advertising, that to them is like so broad, right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
Like, seriously, that’s it. I’m like, yeah, because that’s all they need to know because they need to feel like, oh, well, our agency is doing a light campaign. This campaign. This campaign. I feel comfortable. And then what’s going to happen is when you, let’s say in a month from then, right? They get the contract, two months, you show them the stats, all the craziness, right? And then go, here’s the, like campaign and the da da da campaign and that boost campaign I told you about. And they’re like, oh, they did what they said they’re going to do. And they might not even understand all the crap you’re showing them, but they feel like they’re doing what they said they’re going to do.
Heather Havenwood:
And we’re getting. Oh, and look, there’s this ROI thing on the end. Oh, we’re making money.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Here’s the results.
Heather Havenwood:
Here’s the results, right? That’s how deep you go. Now you’re going to have that person on their side that might, like, they know a lot about Facebook and they want you to go deep, but they will let you know that. They’ll be like, look, I know a lot about, like, can you go a little deeper into, like, this, you know, the pixel? What exact pixel do you have? What’s the retargeting campaign you have? They might go deeper, but, you know, give them the opportunity to go deeper,
Lee Matthew Jackson:
you know, and you only go. I think what you’re saying as well is only go deeper when prompted to go when prompted.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, because that’s happened to me. I’ve been on the phone with some agencies and I. Here’s another thing. Because I’ve had this. They’ve treated me like I’m stupid.
Heather Havenwood:
You know, they’re like, oh, well, we do your website. I’m like, okay, look, let me just. Let me be. Let me be honest.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Do they talk like that as well? Because I. I’ve already got all of my barriers up. If someone starts talking to me like
Heather Havenwood:
they do, and I’m like, they’re like, just. Or I’ll ask them details. Like, just don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it. I’m like, because, look, I just don’t want to be a builder. Like, if I really had to, I could go build a team out. I don’t want to. I’m more than happy to pay you your money.
Heather Havenwood:
Right? But because I know that world, I’m going to ask you more questions than normal. I’m going to be like, okay, I want to know exactly what you’re doing here. What’s your SEO strategy here? Okay, get your key. Oh, that’s. You know, I’m going to ask you a little more deeper questions because I know what I’m talking about, right? So I’m an educated customer, but you don’t have to treat me like I’m stupid or like, oh, don’t worry about it, honey. I got it. I’m like, we’re done.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, I still called you honey as well. And that’s just the phone down.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, I did. I have. Like, hello, Hello?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Order, Order.
Heather Havenwood:
Order. Yeah, I have. But you have to understand that you’re coming to the line with your expertise, and your job is to share it. Share what that expertise is. Go one or two, three levels deep. And then if that person wants to go deeper, then go deeper with them, you know? The other piece I find is I had a particular guy say. I said, well, this sounds great. I’d like to know a little more about your current customers or past customers, results you’ve gotten for your past customers.
Heather Havenwood:
And he threw out, like, some big names, right?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
And I said, well, I’ll be honest with you. I mean, big names like Microsoft. I mean, I’m like, well, that doesn’t really excite me because. Or big hospital, because I don’t feel that their direct response, right? I’m like, can you give me somebody that’s more in my space or something that’s more like what I call small business? And. And he was like, yeah, but it’s confidential. I can’t. I’m like, well, then I don’t trust you. If I can, can you.
Heather Havenwood:
Can you maybe reach out to one and maybe, you know. He was like, no. And I went, okay, well, we’re done. Because I. I can’t do anything with that. And I’m not saying I’m gonna go call them up and hound them, but I kind of like to know someone that you have a customer like me, right? So there’s like some common. You understand how my business works because you’ve done business with my kind of business. So there’s a guy right now I’m talking with.
Heather Havenwood:
I think it’s great. He’s like, because I’m working with. My boyfriend’s a chiropractor, and he’s. He’s done like 15 or 16 chiropractor companies. So he’s like, oh, I know your world.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
Wow. I’m like, I’m willing to pay extra because he knows that space. You know what I mean? So it’s kind of like, oh, wow. Oh, that’s kind of cool. He’s at the first kite. There’s a difference between local business and chiropractor. There’s just the little tiny niche stuff, right? So explaining that to me, it made me go, oh, I kind of trust. Fifteen other chiropractors trusted him.
Heather Havenwood:
And Then he showed me a bunch of examples. He showed me all these different sites. He said, oh, this is mine, this is mine, this is mine. I’m like, oh, wow. I. Yeah, he really. I like his stuff. I get it.
Heather Havenwood:
He’s doing direct response with this company. I love it. Right. So showing me examples like that sold me and sharing other customers. Now, if I wanted to, I could pick up the phone and call the chiropractor, but I don’t have to. I can see the results. Right. So I think that.
Heather Havenwood:
Does that make more sense of sharing?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It really does. And that sharing as well is that building the trust as well, isn’t it? And trust is what’s going to kind of tip the sale.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, yeah. It’s sharing versus selling versus teaching. So sharing is selling. But if some people have that block of like, I don’t want to sell. Right. I just call it sharing. Just share. Share results, share your experiences.
Heather Havenwood:
Share the things you’ve done with your other customers. That is selling, by the way. But it’s a case study. Selling. Yeah, that’s right. So. But sharing, that is going to help the sales process. And don’t teach them.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No.
Heather Havenwood:
Unless they. So for some reason wanted. But by the way, I would say as a teacher perspective, you want to be paid for your teaching. Right. So absolutely don’t do that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
Bad boy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So order. You’re gonna crack me. I’m gonna be saying that all night. This evening at the dinner table tonight, I’ll be like, order.
Heather Havenwood:
You guys are too nice. America is like, shut the. Yeah, we just do that and block it out. I apologize. My bad.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This is great fun. We love it. One of the things I’m thinking of as well, so what you’ve talked about there is. It’s just so valuable because as, again, as agencies, we’re going into these places, we’re going to the rooms. And a lot of people as well, they’re kind of asking you for the strategy as well. They’re almost asking you to kind of do the work before you’ve done it. And the point you made about, you know, being paid to teach, that’s something that is a paid service. And it’s something I’ve touched on in previous podcasts as well, how important it is that, you know, you can get a brief from customer.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
But certainly if they want to pick your brain for your knowledge, that is something that you’ve gained over years and years and years and years. Like an architect, you know, you wouldn’t expect an architect to. To start designing your site. For free. I pick his brain for a few hours and then maybe not talk to him ever again. So that’s the paid stuff. And I love how you framed this where, you know, instead of being tempted to try and teach and also provide kind of as much of the strategy that you’re going to apply for them, ie, give them nearly everything in advance in a pitch so they hardly even need to actually employ you. What you’re saying is, here I am, I’m sharing with you what I do, the sorts of thing at a high level, not too deep, what I can do for you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And hey, here, you know, here are the results and here are the people I’ve worked with in your space. So I get you. So if you want to, you know, if you want to engage me, you know, here it is and here I am, you know, let’s party.
Heather Havenwood:
Part of that, part of that too is, and I’ve experienced this with agencies myself and just working with vendors is getting clear on the distinction of what they don’t do. Because there is a collapse. Especially if you’re working with someone who is just representing a company. They know nothing about digital marketing. Here’s what they do. Okay, you’re my agency, you do everything. Now we all know as agencies, like there’s email marketing, there’s Facebook, there’s paid advertising is organic.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It’s pretty hard to do everything.
Heather Havenwood:
Oh my God. Yeah, so it’s like, it’s very uncommon. You get it. Rep agency does everything. They usually kind of have a segment or a niche. Right, Right. And they’ll do like a build out and paid advertising structure or they only do SEO, or they only do funnel marketing, whatever it is. Right.
Heather Havenwood:
So what you need to be clear on is what you don’t do. It happens a lot. Because here’s the other thing they do. Agencies will go, okay, this sounds great. And they go, okay, this sounds great. And they send them the contract and they assume the person’s gonna read it and then they get a contract and then the contract person’s like, oh, we need you to do this paid media thing everyone’s talking about on Facebook.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Like, well, that’s not a thing, you know.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, your agency do this whole PR thing. Yeah, it should be easy for you. Blah. Yeah, there’s whole, this whole PR press release thing. Do this whole thing. And you’re like, you know how much work that is, Right. And do you have to be clear on what you don’t do or these are things outside of the agreement. You gotta be super clear on that.
Heather Havenwood:
Right. Like this is what we do. And by the way, I just want to be clear what we don’t do. So we don’t do any Facebook management, paid media. If that’s something you want to go down, I can refer you someone or we can have a conversation about what that looks like. What I also don’t do is ppc. Right. That’s what I mean by being super clear.
Heather Havenwood:
Because if they go, oh, I, I, well, we want that. Oh, well, let me add that to the contract. That’s going to be an extra fee of X. And I think web people are just so anxious to like get it done. They don’t want to deal with the contract part. They just want to start building is they don’t take the time to sell and get clear on the contract. The other one that I made a mistake on, I had a particular person that I was doing, agents, I was like a yes to them, we’re done, right? They sent me the contract, I’m ready to go. And this might be, hopefully he’s not listening because he’s gonna think it’s bad.
Heather Havenwood:
But I didn’t go with him because it’s one reason he goes, well, I need all the money up front. It’s a build out. And I said, I said, look, I, look, I respect that, you know, but it’s a build out of a site. And I said, I won’t do it. I’m 50 down, 51 complete. Or I’m willing to do like 40, 20 and 40 or whatever the percent. Like I’m willing to give you money up front and middle, money between and money at the end. Like, I’m willing to go.
Heather Havenwood:
I said, but as a business person, I’m not giving you all my money up front on a contract that’s not complete. I’m just, I’m not gonna do it. You know what I mean? And we didn’t do the deal. And I thought, I get that as a. Because he’s like, he’s like, well, I come really highly recommended. I said, I know that and you do good work and the price is right. But the terms aren’t right now. What was upsetting to me is he never said it on the phone.
Heather Havenwood:
He just said, okay, great, well I’ll send you the contract. He never said, by the way, my terms are this. He let the email do it. And then our little spat was on email. And I don’t like that. It’s like, get on the phone with me and let’s talk. I just assumed terms were 50% that’s my bad. I should have said, okay, just clear on the terms, 50% down, 50%, the end, or whatever.
Heather Havenwood:
Right. And. But he never said anything I should. I overstepped it. So just be clear up front because that’s what killed the whole deal.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah. And if you’ve done a really good job, you followed all this amazing advice, but then you failed to mention that one thing. That’s the deal breaker, isn’t it?
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, it is a deal breaker when it comes to terms of payment or payment or payment terms. I think it’s just something that people are uncomfortable having a conversation with because they’re doing the selling and they’re like, okay, the price is five grand or whatever. They say ten grand or fifteen grand and order. They go. And they just kind of stop there. And I said, okay, you know how that looks is like the price is 15 grand. And what that looks like is when you say, start, our retainer is X. And then when we’re halfway, at this point, we need, you know, an X percent more.
Heather Havenwood:
And then when it’s complete, you get approval and then it’s complete. And then we move it to your server. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s really simple, clear. And I had a guy just yesterday who I’m going to be probably working with, he did exactly that. He said the retainers, X. And then at this point, it’s another like, 10%, you know, to show faith. And then like at the end, the remainder is like, whatever, 40%. And we, once you approve it, we get the money, then we move it to your server and, like, it’s all good.
Heather Havenwood:
Right? That’s good business. Like, oh, I could get that. Right. So I think as an agency, we forget that you have to be willing to work with the company. Right. Because as a company, we don’t want to put all our money up front. Right. We want to make sure that we get the service rendered.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This, I mean, this is such a great conversation right now. I mean, so, I mean, I guess loads of agency would love to get the money up front.
Heather Havenwood:
Sure.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Entirely. But that’s not going to work for, you know, in an ideal world, that doesn’t work because you also lose the motivation. You know, potentially you could lose the motivation. I’ve got all the money, you know, and it kind of. It creates an unequal relationship.
Heather Havenwood:
It does create any relationship. This particular person that said that to me, I know him, I love his work. He has highly. I really want to work. I, like, I told him, I go, I really want to work with you. We’ve had so many conversations about this. I know you know what you’re doing. I could totally trust you.
Heather Havenwood:
So this is the deal breaker. Like can you just work with 50%? 50%. I think that’s really fair on both sides. I mean, is a business owner.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
It’s an equal relationship. And he’s like, no. And I’m like, okay, I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I can’t give you 100% of the money up front. And nothing’s been done yet.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Well, can I put you on the spot here? Can I flip this right around? Because I know a real common problem for agencies as well is that some clients expect you to do all the work before they pay you. Have you any kind of advice in that sort of situation as well? Because I’ll, I’ll stop there.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah. So no. So here’s what I’ll say to that. I don’t like hourly based things. Another agency I talked to, he’s like, well we, I said, well here’s what I need. I was very, I’m very clear on what I need, by the way. So I’m like the ideal client because I’m very clear what I need. Okay, So I like exactly what I need.
Heather Havenwood:
Here’s all the parts I need. I said I need a range of the, of the project, right? And he wouldn’t give it to me. He’s like, well, we go hourly. I’m like, well, figure it out or something. He’s like no, I can’t do it hourly. He gave me this huge range. I mean the range was like two or $3,000 off. I’m like, well that’s a big difference, you know, can you give me something? He’s like, it just depends, right? And I’m like, look, I get as an owner, you don’t know how long it’s going to take, but at least you can.
Heather Havenwood:
That’s why you create the project scope and you give. This is, that’s why you clear the project scope. This is what we’ll do for X price and then ask for 50% retainer or 40% retainer. That is very normal in the any kind of business world, right? And asking for the end once complete and then you don’t move every, move everything over to their server or whatever, right? Until like payment rendered. Right. It’s very clean way to do business. And I don’t like the hourly thing. I don’t like to be surprised.
Heather Havenwood:
I don’t like that to be. I like to Budget. If I’m going to budget a scope out of a build out, I have a number in my head, right? It’s 3,000, 4,000, whatever the number is, 5,000. And if you’re in the range and I like you, I’ll move it, right? But if you’re, if you’re like, oh, it depends and it could be 10k, I’m like, I, I, I gotta, I gotta budget this, you know. So I think that’s what’s missing is that the agencies don’t understand. As a business owner sometimes you, we think, you think there’s just all this money hanging out in this big savings account waiting to be written to you. And that might be in some businesses, but I know in like dentists and chiropractors, all these businesses, especially today with all the issues and taxes and issues in, and now we’re being forced to increase the hourly rate. That’s not necessarily the case all the time.
Heather Havenwood:
We have to budget living wage or
Lee Matthew Jackson:
something, you guys, because we’ve got something like that over here as well.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, minimum wage, living wage. So that’s being increased. And so what happens is, you know, this economic effect. So I’m not saying that blames you, but I just want you to get the whole point of economics. And a good business owner will say we, okay, we need a new site, our budget’s going to be we can spend X, let’s try to get someone like a little underneath that or that, what can we get for that? And then we build out from there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I think though, in many cases, especially in kind of the tender area as well, we already do have the budget, but quite a few clients are either expecting you to do pitch work in advance or simply we have ten grand, we want a website. And that sounds all fair enough, we can do a site within ten grand, but the client’s like, yeah, and we’ll give you, we’ll pay you at the end. I mean, would you advise just walking at that point or no. Some tips for selling them on the deposit? Like give us a deposit.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah, so that’s a great question. So if I was advising someone right now and they had a client who say yes, we can give you 10k but not till the end, all of it. I think any reasonable business person would say, well we have expenses and we need to pay our workers for the time. So 50% down would get us started and then 50% in the end, so then we can pay our workers, you know, and we would, we would basically be floating that at the 50% right. Because we’re paying our workers. I think that’s very respectful. I don’t think that’s weird. I think that’s very respectful.
Heather Havenwood:
And any business owner would understand that. Right. So if they say no, I would say, maybe you’re not the right client for me. You know what I mean? Be willing to say, thank you, but no thank you. Just like, I was willing to say thank you. No, thank you. I know that person’s really amazing. I would love to him to do my site.
Heather Havenwood:
And I’m like, it’s an unfair business relationship. One person’s making all the commitment. The other person’s like, I want to get married, but I can go sleep around. You say, I do. You don’t sleep around, but I get to. It’s like, wait, that’s.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No offense.
Heather Havenwood:
Not fun. That’s not fun order. That’s not good order. Yeah. It’s just not fun that way. So, yeah, you want to have a good relationship with your people because you want them to come back.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Exactly. And I mean, it would. It leads to resentment, et cetera. It’s something that I’ve seen as well, you know, a lot where agencies feel forced to kind of do all the work in advance. So, you know, you’re listening to this. You’re kind of connecting with what Heather’s saying, what we’re talking about, and the issues that, you know, the people have raised with me about this. And I’m one of those people who will only take 50% up front, or if it’s a bigger project, we’ll do stages of 25. 25? 25?
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Or something along those lines. And I’ve always worked in that way. But I do know a lot of the people that I deal with on a regular basis kind of are having to put that commitment out there of doing all the work in advance and paying suppliers, etc.
Heather Havenwood:
Here’s what I would say to that person, though. I bet you on the phone call, they never talked about it. I never. I bet you in the cells.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And you raised that earlier, didn’t you? Talking. You know, talking. Yeah.
Heather Havenwood:
I bet you. I bet you. You had that conversation. Did you bring that up on the first sales call? No. Okay, well, then whose fault is that?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You know, such good advice. Get it in there right at the beginning. Do this. This. We don’t do this, and our terms are, boom.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So if they then say, yes, you were aware of our terms.
Heather Havenwood:
Right. Right. So if you went forward, then you were aware this is how we work. Right. And every company has that. This is how we work. Right. Let’s work it out.
Heather Havenwood:
Right. So that’s why, you know, we have Donald Trump to do all negotiations in the future. No, I’m kidding. So. But negotiations, just communication. We give you this, I give you that. Awesome. Let’s negotiate.
Heather Havenwood:
Let’s have a conversation. And I, like I said, going back to agencies, a lot of times you have the builder person who’s on the phone doing the sales. And what I found, not always, but I’m going to generalize. Speaking as the builder. Right. The builder guy doesn’t want to deal with that. The negotiation piece, the like of the real estate industry. The builder here we’re talking about is a general contractor.
Heather Havenwood:
General contractor deals with all the, all the workers. The true builder, by the way, the true, the true guy who owns the business, the building business in our world deals with the money. He deals with the architect and he deals with the potential owner of the, of the house or the land or whatever. He’s dealing with all the money. A true builder does deals with the money. He knows how much the project’s gonna be. It’s gonna be 10,000. We’re gonna charge 15,000.
Heather Havenwood:
We’re making a profit. 15. Oh, they want, they want 10. Okay, let’s negotiate. 12. We’re making two grand. He’s the one who negotiates. A true builder does that.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Awesome.
Heather Havenwood:
Yeah. Hope that helps. Does that help?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
This is awesome. Yeah. I love that you’ve come.
Heather Havenwood:
You’re silent over there.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’m just like kind of staring into space. I love the fact that you are using kind of building, estate agents, all this sort of stuff because it’s something that I’ve used so often. It’s so refreshing to hear someone from that industry who’s also now very digitally savvy, you know, using the exact same, you know, the method. And this is tried and trusted, tried and tested. Sorry. This is the way it’s been done for years in building and as agencies. Let’s get ourselves in that mindset. You’ve dropped so much value.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I mean, we have to keep these, these kind of to 40 minutes for the commute. So I’m going to have to say in my typical British voice, order, order. So what would be awesome if we can kind of wrap up with two things. Number one is where can people go to start learning more of this? You’ve already kind of put really eloquently some, some amazing advice which, you know, I’m going to put in the show notes as well, but kind of, where could where could people go to learn more of this? You know, to kind of infiltrate their brains? Get more advice on, on this, on this whole topic.
Heather Havenwood:
Well, for, I mean, you can go check me out. You want.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Obviously, that’s kind of what I was pitching for there, but carry on, carry on.
Heather Havenwood:
That was very good. Dodgy. So you can check me [email protected] there you can click on Work with Heather, upper right hand corner, and get on the phone with me. You can have a conversation. What I mainly do, what’s funny is most of the clients I have have some kind of business between 1 to 5 million. And I work with the owner, and I work with them on sales. Now they usually come to me for something else, and then that’s what ends up happening. Right.
Heather Havenwood:
Like I’m working with you to. How does you be the leader and the CEO and the salesman of your business? And it’s, that’s not how it usually starts because they usually end up start being the pie maker, and now they have to learn how to be the salesperson. So I work with them. Check out work with Heather. Also, you can, if you want to be interested in my dating business where I teach men how to date women, you can go to datingtriggers.com or, or sexyboss inc.com, which is empowerment of women. That’s it. Yes.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s how, that’s how you connect with Heather and get all of her amazing advice. Heather, before, before you go, we always, you know, you’ve heard of entrepreneur via John Lee Dumas. They always kind of finish with, with kind of a sage piece of wisdom, kind of like an action that people can go ahead and start to apply to their business. And we like to do the same thing. He’s kind of my, he’s not my actual mentor in real life. I like to think he is. I follow him. I think he’s a great guy.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And we like to wrap up as well. Because you’ve dropped so much knowledge. I’m imagining that people driving in a car, they don’t have a notebook. They can’t necessarily write all this down. Is there something you’d like to plant in people’s brain that, you know, they can go away with to remember to kind of start them on their journey,
Heather Havenwood:
plant in their brain. Like an NLP thing, right? Yeah, it could be.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
You could kind of like maybe sing a song and that if we then do it backwards, it actually says something.
Heather Havenwood:
That would be awesome. I, I, yeah, I’m not that talented. Okay, I will give you a quote Go for it. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you a quote. It was something that someone gave to me at a very, very chaotic time in my life. The end of my bankruptcy. I was very lost, didn’t know what to do.
Heather Havenwood:
And so he gave me this quote. And it’s a quote that I use today. It’s something that I use on a daily basis down to the details of my life. And here’s a quote. It’s actually a question, but here’s it. Here it is. Does this feed my confusion or strengthen my clarity? Does this feed my confusion or strengthen my clarity? So I put that question to everything from relationships to business partners to before I do podcasts, is it going to strengthen my clarity in my life and business, or is it going to create chaos? Because when you’re clear, you’re confident and strong and when you’re in chaos and one’s weak and not going anywhere, you’re in circles. So create clarity in your life creates confidence and create clarity in your business creates growth.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I am so glad I met you, Heather. Head over to heather haven wood.com and check out her content. She’s got her mailing list where she’s dropping value bombs galore. Great blog. You’ve got your own podcast as well. Go ahead and listen to that. And Heather, thank you so much for your time. Are you anywhere on social media as well? Is there anywhere you’d like people to connect socially?
Heather Havenwood:
LinkedIn. I’m a big one on LinkedIn and Facebook, mainly LinkedIn. So LinkedIn. It’s actually, it’s heatheronlinkin.com I have my own URL.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
That’s a clever idea because it is.
Heather Havenwood:
Right.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Facebook on LinkedIn.com forward/in.
Heather Havenwood:
I also have Facebook on. No heather on facebook.com or use heather. Haven’t you?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
I’ll get them in the show notes as well.
Heather Havenwood:
Thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Click through.
Heather Havenwood:
This is a lot of fun.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It was. Thank you so much for your time again. I mean it. So glad I met you. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and just letting me pick your brain for the last 40 odd minutes.
Heather Havenwood:
Am I dodgy?
Lee Matthew Jackson:
No, not at all. Not at all.
Heather Havenwood:
So I love you guys.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Thanks so much. Have an awesome day, mate.
Heather Havenwood:
Thank you.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
Take care.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
And that wraps up episode 23. And I know that’s giving you loads
Lee Matthew Jackson:
of food for thought.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
It gave me absolute tons of food for thought and it’s just sparked so many conversations over the last couple of weeks here at Lee Jackson Dev. We’ve all been talking through this, talking through processes, talking through how we sell.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So.
Lee Matthew Jackson:
So it’s been an absolute eye opener for us and I’m really excited for the future. Now, again, I keep harping on about this, but it is exciting to grow the Facebook group to get to meet all the people that listen to the show, to get people’s feedback, etc. So you can find us [email protected] group. That’s leejacksondev.com Group. And that will redirect you to the Facebook group. It’s a private area where we can all connect, ask questions, share information, and just generally have a great time. So it’d be so cool to meet you over there. And until then, and until next week, have an awesome week and don’t forget to keep innovating.
