Scott Scully is the Founder and CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a B2B lead generation company and business growth agency. For the last 12 years, they have offered multi-channel marketing solutions to small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to grow through outbound lead generation, marketing services, and Salesforce consulting.
Eric Watkins started at Abstrakt Marketing Group in 2012 as an Operations Intern and since then have worked his way up to holding a position on the Executive team and overseeing the company as President. During his time at Abstrakt, he has assisted in the restructuring of the Partner Sales division which enabled Abstrakt to grow its employee count by 140%. In 2018, Eric earned Workforce Magazine’s Game Changer award and in 2022 was honored as one of St. Louis's 100 Titans.
Jeff Winters is the Founder and CEO of Sapper Consulting, which helps companies deliver data-driven sales campaigns to replace cold calling, drive pipeline and ignite ROI. Their tactics have been featured in Forbes, Inc., HBR, Entrepreneur, HubSpot, Salesforce, and more because they’re up to 300% more effective than standard metrics. Sapper Consulting has experienced tremendous growth, tripling 3 times in 3 years.
Together they have launched The Grow Show podcast and publish weekly episodes to help business leaders improve their processes and procedures. You can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and more.
If you’re looking to improve your sales processes, build out a better sales pipeline, or a better way to grow your agency profitably and sustainably, this episode is chock-full of insights you surely won’t want to miss.
What’s in their glasses: Kentucky Owl Confiscated Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey
This Cast Covers:
- How Scott started Abstrakt Marketing Group and has been helping businesses have more predictable sales meetings for the past 12 years and counting (03:41)
- Eric shares his ascent from starting out as an intern to working his way up to become the president at Abstrakt Marketing Group (05:44)
- Jeff recalls his early days starting Sapper Consulting in 2013 and growing it to about 150 employees and over 750 clients today (09:18)
- If they had the biggest deal in company history come across your desk, who would Scott, Eric, or Jeff send out to work and close the deal? (13:16)
- The number of face-to-face sales presentations Scott’s ever done in his entire career (14:31)
- What gets you out of bed in the morning? (15:10)
- Debunking the fallacy that you cannot impact meaningful life change through business (17:42)
- JJ recalls personally seeing lives change when an agency owner who was stuck at $4M for the longest time exited for $17M eighteen months after building out a sales operation for them (19:41)
- What can you do to bring your salespeople out of a slump and move forward in the right direction (21:56)
- Eric feels the greatest rush in his career when this happens (24:43)
- Joey crushing it as the first guest on The Grow Show – a podcast hosted by Scott, Eric, and Jeff (27:14)
- Is the AE-SDR/closer-biz dev rep model the only way modern way to do sales effectively? (28:09)
- Some are better at setting appointments, others are better at closing (29:58)
- Joey brings up an alternative to the AE-SDR/closer-biz dev rep model for agencies with lower profit margins (32:00)
- The concept of the enabled full-cycle salesperson (32:31)
- Profitability challenges one can see in the AE-SDR marriage and the enabled full-cycle salesperson model (34:00)
- Is the follow-up really the most impactful part? (39:00)
- An extra step in the follow-up process that most sales teams just don’t do which can make the jobs of the SDR, sales admin, and closer better (40:30)
- How tweaking this model could help sales reps become more motivated at their jobs (41:44)
- Why money doesn’t grow on trees – a reminder for every agency owner listening to this podcast (43:44)
- Joey points out just how impressive it is to build Abstrakt to be making $60 million per year as a lead gen company (46:36)
- What sets up their clients for success and what do agencies who drive more revenue have that others don’t? (47:59)
- A key characteristic of their successful customers know how to sell cold outbound leads (49:41)
- Why you should always be reminding your clients about the ridiculous amount of activity your service takes and not just the results (51:00)
- One major pitfall most agency owners make specifically with outbound lead generation (54:57)
- The biggest hurdle right now for Eric and Jeff in their own sales department (57:12)
- Why specialization is so crucial in hiring and training sales reps (58:00)
- The biggest opportunity that Abstrakt could really work on that would help even more businesses grow (59:00)
- “Sell it before you build it” (1:00:00)
- Scott, Eric, and Jeff answer a very personal question that you as an agency owner should probably start thinking about as well (1:02:00)