Proven Sales Strategies for Your WordPress Agency  🔗 **Source:** [Proven Sales Strategies for Your WordPress Agency](https://share.snipd.com/episode/10a77ac8-e674-4184-9a86-a1698017487d) ## Highlights - **Productize Services To Scale Predictably** - Productize your services to make offerings repeatable and scalable. - Olly describes turning profitable client services into cookie-cutter products so pitching and builds become faster and more predictable. Transcript: Olly Feldman It's a really interesting question because we see it a lot where people all have the same type of mindset and succeed and the people who are trying to succeed and they're not necessarily Thinking about the mindset way of doing it, they're trying to win that next big customer, as you say. Whereas where we've seen agencies really have success and go from freelancer to one or two developers boutique up into a bigger agency has been two areas really which is niching down So really focusing on what they specialize in and who they want to specialize it for but actually the main one is when they strip it back and start looking at their processes internally And how profitable every part of that process is, and therefore productize that offering rather than just sell everything. So they actually look at all of the services they provide to clients, who their most profitable clients are, take the services they're providing to them and productize it in a way that Is easily repeatable, almost cookie cutter. So we can resell this service, we can resell this service at a profitable price. And it allows them to focus. And then you kind of get away from the let's have a two week plan to build a proposal for a new client that we want on board that we don't win. And you perhaps do that three or four times until you win one and you've lost a lot of time. Instead, you've got a repeatable process so that pitching becomes quicker. ([Time 0:02:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8c4b8b2d-70fd-4dc1-91a1-d9a02b7d88c1)) - **Think Like A Bakery Not A Construction Site** - Moving from bespoke work to repeatable offerings is like shifting from a construction site to a bakery with set recipes. - That shift lets agencies predict hiring needs and show clear value to clients, improving sales clarity. Transcript: Olly Feldman I mean i like to refer to it as moving from a construction site to a bakery where you have set recipes set ways you're doing things yes you can customize it and tweak it and change it but you've Got your core range of products that you're just making all the time and that also allows you to predictably scale because you know oh when we have five more of these products we need another Developer or we need another ops manager or whatever it may be but the key thing that i see is it allows you to show the value of what you're offering and allow the customer to understand It which what you're saying there and i think that's the hardest piece that i've seen agency owners try to figure out is that understanding actually we need to sell on the value not on The technicality of what we can build and the features that we can add into it they need to focus on more the value and what all those features and technicalities are going to give you as A brand that's working with that agency and how we've seen them get over it is more than not working with someone who's done it before. So working with a mentor, joining an agency peer group where they're getting to go to, you know, a no holds barred boardroom session where you speak with other agency owners, talking About your problems, where you want to go and being shown real world experience. I mean, we do that a lot of our customers as well, where I've been working with agencies for 15 years. And so we've seen the ups, we've seen the downs, we've seen what's worked and what's not. So we can start to have that conversation with them and let them see what's possible. ([Time 0:06:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b900f2e2-9e87-42ca-bf2e-3fed887c53b3)) - **Train Teams To Replicate Founder-Led Sales** - Invest in learning consultative selling and train staff to replicate founder-led rapport. - Olly emphasizes founder-led sales early, then building playbooks so teams can scale trust-based client interactions. Transcript: Olly Feldman As the hosting company as well? Yeah, I think it's hugely important. And I think that's why so many agencies when they're starting out and actually even when they get pretty big are still founder-led sales because that's the person who is the business. And so they come across in the right way to build that rapport and give the trust. But it can be really hard, especially where a lot of boutique or small agencies are set up where someone leaves an agency, could be a developer, could be a designer, where they start doing Enough freelance work on the side and go, you know what, I'm going to set up my own agency. And they start and they don't have those skills. I think that's where they can really struggle in the early days, because they're not used to building rapport with people and having to go and have these conversations. And I often will implore them to go and study go and study some sales study how to build trust and rapport with people because it makes such a big difference particularly in the early days If you haven't been in that client facing role and you've been in the background as a developer it makes such a difference and then investing in your own team as you get bigger so you want To move away from founder-led sales and create a scalable repeatable processes in the agency you need to then empower your staff to do the same thing so it's the right training and the Right guidelines really and playbooks that they follow through to build that trust how we do it here at hosting.com is very similar i mean all of our account managers are extremely well Trained. They've been in this industry for a long time. They're not sort of fresh out of college or that first job and coming in here. We have got experienced people. We do have those sorts of staff members in different sales teams handling different things. And of course, they can move between teams within the business. So we have experienced people who know the industry, know the product and know agencies, and they've worked with agencies for many years. And then the main focus is we are consultative. So the one thing I do not want my team to be doing is selling. They're not car salesmen, they're not out there to try and hammer as many deals as possible. ([Time 0:09:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2d4ab883-9af0-4321-8403-2a03970c5166)) - **Niche Down To Simplify Selling** - Niche down to reduce varied sales conversations and become repeatable in solving specific market problems. - Olly explains niching cuts daily disparate pain points so teams can deeply understand verticals and lead to solutions. Transcript: Matt Medeiros Then from an agency's point of view. Oh, yeah, sorry. Nope, continue. Olly Feldman As i say from from an agency's point of view i think this is where niching down really helps because if you're not niched down you could be having 20 different conversations in a day with 20 different um you know pain points they're trying to resolve and 20 different outcomes they're trying to fix. Whereas if you super niche down, it's always repeatable. You might have three different options that you're going down, but it's easier to show that value and easier to really understand that marketplace you're in, the vertical you're in, And therefore know the problems and how to solve them and how to lead someone to the solution. I think if you are full service and going everywhere, you then have to kind of go higher level from your verticals. You know, is it an e-commerce site and they're trying to convert? Is it a SaaS product they're trying to get signups? Or is it an informational site and it's trying to be super clear to understand and navigate? And, you know, you have to then focus on the different verticals and focus on that higher level. ([Time 0:16:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/446f0f4b-c472-4dd4-bf14-b0e4e79a549e)) - **Make Discovery Calls Your Closing Foundation** - Use discovery calls to map timelines, success criteria, and the buyer's sign-off process early. - Olly says knowing decision-makers and what success looks like upfront lets you be consultative and close more effectively. Transcript: Olly Feldman It's a really good question. And it is a fine line to walk because we do not want to be car salesman, double glazing salesman where, you know, you're just going hard for the sale and the close. It has to be the right fit. And that's the key piece. It's actually the very first conversation rather than the last conversation. And the first conversation, we can understand timelines. What does success actually look like? Why would you be choosing to move? And what does success look like after you've moved? ([Time 0:19:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f18ffab4-b019-4bbc-8097-b9a7a2ff6b37)) - **WooCommerce Enables Reliable Retainers** - WooCommerce sites create clearer paths to recurring revenue via maintenance and product updates. - Olly notes agencies can sell retainers to merchants because ongoing updates and uptime directly support client revenue. Transcript: Olly Feldman It is evolving constantly. We have seen a really big uptake in media sites and blogger sites particularly where the blog, but they then turn into a Woo site. So it'll be a blogger that's, you know, coming up on social media. They have a huge media gallery that links back into everything they're doing. And then they become a Woo site when they start selling merch. We're seeing that happen a lot. If you're an agency, it depends whether you want to go for cookie cutter at scale, where you want to do volume of sites, or whether you want to have less clients paying more. And that's then really where the Woo sites come in because the additional benefit to a Woo site over a standard site is the maintenance plans, your recurring revenue, you can get off The back of that. You can have that client on a retainer because that website is making money. They need to ensure it stays online. They need to ensure it's updated. They'll probably be bringing in new products all the time. And that's when you can then sell those additional products through to those clients where you can build recurring revenue. ([Time 0:22:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e519409b-cd65-4e77-bdce-a73139c160c8)) - **Create A Fair Agency Lead Handoff** - Build a preferred partner list and offer multiple agency options when handing leads from hosting to agencies. - Olly describes a manual handoff giving at least three vetted agencies now and a platform to self-select coming soon. Transcript: Olly Feldman Only in its first phase currently and we have a much bigger more in-depth plan launching in the coming months which i'm really excited about i can't wait for that to come out and that will Be i don't want to go into too much detail because it could change but it's really exciting what's being built there. At the moment, how that will work is we do get leads very often on a daily basis where we'll be working either with an end client of an agency and they no longer work with the agency, but the Hosting is still with us and then they need a new agency. Or we'll oftentimes have someone who's just been hosting their own site that they've built and now they've grown big enough and they want an agency and they'll come to us for advice of Who to be introduced to. In that scenario, how we currently work is we have a list of preferred partners. So it's people who we know and have seen have done a good job, who we have a really close working relationship with. So, you know, we understand how their business works. And from that, we know that that'd be a good fit for the lead that comes in. We will always give a minimum of three options to the person. So we never just say, hey, this is this one agency. And we do keep track of who we're passing things through to as well to keep it as varied as possible and not just have one preferred partner that everything's getting passed through to. But that's how it works at the moment. And that is a very manual process within my account management team. And they will be passing them to customers as against leads, obviously. But the new program that's being built allows people to source the agency themselves within the platform. It's really exciting what's coming. So it's, yeah, I won't go into too much detail because it could change. ([Time 0:25:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c4268331-3997-4dc4-9a53-48d3c37cf36d)) - **Use Copilots To Make Sales Context-Aware** - Integrated AI copilots add context-aware meeting and email assistance by surfacing documents and suggested replies. - Olly highlights Copilot access to emails, docs, and custom GPTs that summarize calls and draft follow-ups automatically. Transcript: Olly Feldman So we have AI in our CRM system, and we have AI on our email system. So we're a Microsoft house. We use Office 365. So we have Copilot, and we have the sales version of Copilot. And what the biggest benefit to that is, is twofold. You can ask it a question and it has access to all of your emails, all of your company documents, your knowledge bases, and it can surface the question. It could be as simple from this particular version of Joomla, is it supported on this server that we sell? So it can be a really basic question if it's not something we're selling that often and it will surface the answer for them. But where we see the biggest benefit is if someone emails us, it's already brought up all the context, all of the documents we may have worked on together, the quotes we've worked on together, And it's already suggesting how to reply to that email. If we have a meeting booked, and it could be the pitch meeting, it will bring up the pitch documents we've created, it will bring up all of the previous conversations, condense it, tell Us what our previous talking points are and what our key talking points and metrics are this time. We have some custom GPTs in there, so it knows our sales processes that we go through, and it will tell the staff if they've surfaced the right information in the calls. If they haven't, it will prompt them to surface the information on the next call or in follow-up email. It automatically writes the follow-ups for us and the action points. ([Time 0:28:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5569a21f-89d1-4e11-8990-8ba4775531dc)) - **Don't Rely On Unchecked AI Outreach** - Avoid purely AI-driven outbound that lacks human nuance; approve and personalize messages before sending. - Olly reports high volume but low conversion from AI outreach, so they plan small personalized campaigns with human approval. Transcript: Olly Feldman So we have tested having like an AI SDR that is connecting and meshing people on LinkedIn. And it did great volume, but it was a super low conversion rate because the messaging it was building was clearly AI and not human fed. And that comes back to that relationship piece where it's missing the nuance of, if one of my team would reach out to someone on LinkedIn, they may have picked something up off their personal LinkedIn. Like, you live in Vegas. When I was in Vegas, I went to this really cool little pub. Is it still there? A little bit of context that AI just can't match that will start a relationship and start a conversation. But we are looking at creating a new N8N process using Drippify and Claude and Open where we create all the campaigns and we create the messaging. There's about 180 different campaign routes that someone could go down and it truly personalizes it to them and writes it as us. And actually this will be sending it as us directly as well. And it won't be sending 5,000 a day. It will be two or three messages a day done in a truly personalized way, and we will approve the messages before they send as well. ([Time 0:30:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/90093807-994e-4011-8f21-3d3682676c60)) - **Agency GPT Builds Pitches During Discovery** - Butterfly Effect created a GPT that listens during discovery and generates a priced pitch immediately. - Olly says their GPT is onboarded like a staffer and delivers a ready pitch deck and price after the first meeting, boosting wins. Transcript: Olly Feldman And they've done a talk on this, so I'm sure they'll be happy with me talking about it. But they created their own GPT that listens when they are going to a discovery meeting. So if they have a new brand that they want to pitch to, they basically have a laptop as a fifth person in the room. And it's just listening to everything that's going on the key part to this is that gpt has been onboarded to their company it's gone through the full onboarding process that a new member Of staff would go through it's gone through that pitch process it's gone through their pitch decks it's gone through how they work how they price things and what this enables them to Do is at the end of that discovery meeting it's already built the pitch deck, it's priced the job, and it's all ready to go. So instead of them having to go back to the agency using six, sometimes 12 hours of staff's time that's no longer billable because it's for a pitch, it's done. And they can pitch it there and then. ([Time 0:31:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8676199c-9fcf-4d11-ab3e-765edaddf1dc))