This is a snippet from the Kyle Vamvouris episode of Funnel Vision. For the full scoop, check out the last episode!

Meet Shawna Tregunna, CEO and Chief Strategist of Acclivity - a B2B marketing agency specializing in Account-Based Marketing, Content Marketing, Earned Media and Virtual Marketing. Their focus market consists of manufacturers, IoT providers, and innovative technologies.

Today’s episode welcomes Shawna Tregunna, CEO and Chief Strategist of Acclivity - a B2B marketing agency specializing in Account-Based Marketing, Content Marketing, Earned Media and Virtual Marketing. Their focus market consists of manufacturers, IoT providers, and innovative technologies.

Acclivity has been active for almost 4 years, but it’s not Shawnas first agency venture. Her first agency came to be due to the explosion of Twitter back in the day. She was an early adopter, making noise on the platform and experimenting with a variety of formats until she was approached by an investor that saw an early opportunity in social media and chose Shawna to pioneer the SMMA movement. She ran that agency for 7 years up until a client decided to buy the agency, giving Shawna her first exit.

Her current agency started during COVID, when the world went fully virtual and social media became an even bigger part of how brands get their message to potential clients. Shawna couldn’t idly stand by while businesses that have close to 0 social media expertise were now thrown into a new world, so she started Acclivity to put her years of experience to great use. They’ve now expanded their service offering to include account based marketing, which is one of the hottest marketing strategies in B2B.

The first ideal client profile that Shawna pursued was other agencies that were looking to add social to their marketing offering. This helped her grow tremendously, as her clients book of business would also become her book of business, allowing for a huge increase in their overall reach and industry knowledge. She also approached clients as partnerships, helping increase her nearbound circle and organically grow her referral network.

Going viral shouldn’t always be the goal, but that’s a tough sell as an SMMA. Shawna’s first challenges arose when clients would expect a huge dose of vanity metrics across the board with every engagement, which led to a lot of misalignment between her agency and clients. Nowadays, most B2B companies understand that virality isn’t the best metric to gauge the success of an SMMA engagement, but there’s still many that expect likes and comments to be the North Star, which simply doesn’t make sense when selling into technical folks that aren’t chronically online.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how Shawna pioneered the SMMA movement and transitioned into ABM!

HIGHLIGHTS:

01:16 First Agency to exit
03:31 The birth of Acclivity
06:04 How Shawna grew her agency
09:01 The challenges of growing an SMMA
12:31 Thriving in a data-driven world
16:40 Tips for selling your agency
18:31 Grow through ABM

Connect with Shawna - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnaactually/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

This is a snippet from the Kyle Vamvouris episode of Funnel Vision. For the full scoop, check out the last episode!

Meet Kyle Vamvouris, CEO of Vouris. They help B2B SaaS and service companies build their SDR and AE teams. Vouris uses a data-first approach to structure teams, optimize performance, and to ultimately develop a repeatable sales process. Kyle has worked with over 70 B2B companies, generated $100m+ in sales, helped raise over $280m in venture capital and written 3 sales books.

Today’s episode welcomes Kyle Vamvouris, CEO of Vouris. They help B2B SaaS and service companies build their SDR and AE teams. Vouris uses a data-first approach to structure teams, optimize performance, and to ultimately develop a repeatable sales process. Kyle has worked with over 70 B2B companies, generated $100m+ in sales, helped raise over $280m in venture capital and written 3 sales books.

Improving your sales through tactical means can only get you so far. When consulting startups, Kyle has noticed that many sales organizations fail to become data-driven and end up building unnecessary bottlenecks by focusing on the wrong growth paths.

After a career of selling everything from transactional products to B2B software, Kyle went out on his own and started Vouris. At the time he had 2 small kids and he was the sole financial provider for his family. Even when he secured his first 2 clients, he still couldn’t afford to pay himself a salary. As he kept investing back into the business, a year later he was quickly hit with the opposite problem - spending 39 hours/week on client calls alone.

Once you’re past the stage where you can sustainably service all your clients alone, the logical next step is to start hiring. Kyle initially wanted his new team to take over client deliverables, but it quickly backfired. When you’re hiring someone to deliver on your behalf, you can’t expect them to take over what you’re doing without proper guidelines, systems and operational procedures.

In a service based business, you should focus on hiring those who can fill in the gaps between the business functions that you’re best at. Kyle’s agency journey improved significantly after he finally filled the operational part of his business and got to focus on sales and marketing.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to build an agency from 0!

HIGHLIGHTS:
01:58 Should sellers be data-driven?
03:42 Kyle’s sales journey
06:39 Building a sales agency
08:33 The challenges of building a team
09:44 How to make the right hires
11:34 The value of experience
17:24 Talk to your customers!

Connect with Kyle - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylevamvouris/

Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

Today’s episode welcomes John Jantsch, Founder and CEO of Duct Tape Marketing - a consultancy that helps Small & Local Business Owners, Professional Services providers and Consultants streamline their marketing approach, increase revenue and scale strategically by providing a proven, practical and simple system called Duct Tape Marketing.

Big businesses have the resources to craft bespoke and intricate strategies, while SMB’s often need to rely on tactics and do a ton of guesswork. John knew that this needed to change, so he built a repeatable strategic framework that would help small businesses approach their marketing efforts strategically. This change has led his clients to dramatic growth and allowed them to transition out of the founder-led go-to-market stage.

Strategy is a difficult concept to sell. Instead of relying on output metrics and deliverables, a strategic engagement requires experimentation, adaptability and effort from both sides of the table. John suggests taking a consultative approach, where you outline how their pain is impacted by deeper problems than just tactical misalignment or the lack of a new tool.

If you’re looking to earn the trust of big businesses, simply sending out email campaigns without a strong brand strategy won’t cut it. In order to succeed, you have to be able to build trust autonomously - either through strategic partnerships or events/content collaboration where you can display your expertise without turning it into a sales pitch.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on why strategic marketing always prevails!

HIGHLIGHTS:
02:24 How to approach working with SMB’s
04:12 You should lead with strategy
06:07 Why fractional marketing?
08:50 How to become a strategy-driven agency
10:05 Why small businesses matter
11:50 Teaching strategy to small businesses
15:04 Close big deals when you’re small
18:11 Standing out in a crowded market

Connect with John - www.linkedin.com/in/ducttapemarketing/
Connect with Mikael - www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

Today’s episode welcomes Chris DuBois, Founder of Dynamic Agency OS and Leading For Effect.

At Leading for Effect, they reignite your organization's purpose through leadership coaching and business consulting that delivers extraordinary results.

At Dynamic Agency OS, they help agencies build world-class teams so they can improve operational efficiency, leading to higher revenue and profit.

Before becoming a founder, Chris spent 5 years at Lean Labs, a growth agency for B2B SaaS. In 3 years time he climbed up the ranks and became CEO. He initially joined in an operations position, helping the company become more profitable. They grew from 10 - 25 team members during his tenure. It wasn’t all smooth from the beginning - one of the biggest lessons learned when scaling Lean Labs was how to recruit and retain the right people.

The biggest problem that agency owners and CEOs face is the inability to let go. The more involved you are in every process, the less valuable your agency will be, as without a trusted team in place that can run the day to day you’ll be very limited with the amount of quality work you can produce and the level of clients you can take on and retain.

With the recent development in AI tech and the overabundance of tactical practitioners, the best way to make yourself irreplaceable as an agency is to build a strategic offer. You need to identify what niche you can become the best in the world at and find the missing pieces that can get you there. Then, you restructure from strictly providing deliverables to providing outcomes.

Tune into the full episode to learn how to become an irreplaceable agency!

HIGHLIGHTS:
03:30 Lean Labs growth challenges
05:32 How to transition from ops to CEO
08:32 Successful transition into CEO
10:35 Growing as an agency owner
14:01 Becoming an irreplaceable marketing agency
18:31 Prove your value through strategy
22:01 How to niche down as an agency
29:22 Chris’ best growth tactic

Connect with Chris - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherrdubois
Connect with Mikael - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

Today’s episode welcomes Graeme Barlow, CEO of Iversoft - a software development company that provides expert mobile app and web development services for organizations looking to elevate their business and adapt to the digital world.

Graeme’s background is nothing short of spectacular. He’s a serial entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience who has built, scaled and sold multiple companies. He started out with a digital currency company in the early 2000’s, then moved on to a game development studio, spent 3+ years in venture capital investing in SaaS, then went on to co-found his own SaaS company, and now he’s joined Iversoft and helped them hit their growth spurt going from humble beginnings to a team of 50+.

Agencies are notoriously difficult to scale past a certain point - which is typically below the 8 figure mark. When Graeme joined Iversoft, he immediately requested a seat at the table. Before he joined, the agency had done a lot of relatively small revenue projects, with no single customer bringing in more than $100k. Here’s the kicker - they had worked with big brands on small deals. Brands like Audi and Michael Bublé had entrusted their app development process to Iversoft, but there weren’t any real enterprise-level deals to show for it. Graeme leveraged these projects to do some serious brand building for the first time in the company's history, and through that process they got the right opportunities to go upmarket.

One of the biggest pivots that helped them double their headcount was going from project billing to retainers. To take this step, Graeme first audited their historic projects and realized that half of their project based work weren’t bringing in any profit, while the other half were wildly profitable due to an incorrect scope. Looking at the data they realized that their profitable projects were already being approached as retainers - they just didn’t have the right model set from the get go.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to scale an agency to 8 figures!

HIGHLIGHTS:
00:54 Graeme’s background
03:26 How to build an 8-figure agency brand
06:45 What’s really stopping your growth
10:02 Going from project billing to retainer
16:56 Iversoft scaling challenges
22:09 Investing vs burning money

Connect with Graeme - https://www.linkedin.com/in/graemebarlow/
Connect with Mikael - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/

Today’s episode welcomes Jason Wojo, Founder & CEO of Wojo Media - a 255+ clientele operating marketing agency that handles companies' social media pages, does content creation and manages Facebook/Google ads. He’s also a self-made multi-millionaire who’s managed to grow his Instagram page to 1M+ followers and he’s the author of the best-selling book “Ads That Sell”. As of June 2024, his portfolio includes $123M in paid ads revenue.

Jason built his agency while simultaneously attending business school. He got off the ground by taking a high velocity approach to prospecting into small accounts across a variety of industries. This taught him how to sell, but most importantly how to communicate in a business environment. He closed his 13 first clients at $200 per client, which doesn’t seem like a lot - but keep in mind he was a college kid at the time, which means he was still outearning his peers while also building a business.

Even though nowadays everyones talking about not going to college and starting an agency, Jason was a true pioneer of this movement during his time in business school. Through actively serving clients and being active on social media, he quickly learned about the impact of a winning funnel strategy. This elevated him to his first $4000/month deal which completely changed his life.

The pivotal change that helped Jason move upmarket and ultimately get to $18 million in revenue was learning to let go and trust your team. At first he spread himself way too thin working 16 hours a day. Like many agency owners, Jason had built new service lines in addition to ads. His coaching service was what 4x’d his revenue, but it kept him way too busy to focus on the growth of the business. In the midst of complete burnout, he started to scale with a team for the first time.

Tune into the full episode to learn more on how to generate revenue like Jason Wojo!

HIGHLIGHTS:
04:07 How Jason Wojo started his agency
09:41 Jason’s first big client
11:15 What gets you to $18 million in revenue?
13:21 Building your first agency team
16:26 Jason’s biggest growth tip
17:45 Structuring an irresistible offer
18:43 Overcomplication is the enemy
21:36 Jason’s first hire

Connect with Jason - https://www.instagram.com/thejasonwojo/?hl=en
Connect with Mikael - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikaeldia/