The Product-Led Sales Process a 2-Person Agency Used to Close 19 Clients in 2 Months
By Vendasta Marketing TL;DR: A 2-person agency called Digital Concierge used a product-led sales process that closed 19 clients in 2 months. They offer their prospective clients free software to help them establish and maintain an online presence, bringing them immediate value while building up their know, like, and trust factors.
To get free access to their sales deck, and in-depth video tutorials of their sales process, simply fill out the form.
Closing new clients is the toughest challenge for an agency.
If you agree with this statement, you’ll likely draw inspiration from this story.
Meet Digital Concierge.
Digital Concierge is a 2-person marketing agency that Derek Fox and Justin Chevallier run. They’ve been working in digital marketing with a combined 40 years of experience under their belts, helping more than 10,000 local business owners throughout their careers.
They’ve worked hard to set their business up in a way that serves more clients with less work. They’ve spent years looking for the right platform that could help them to not only offer greater value to their clients through more products and services, but also help them scale their business to new heights.
Check out Digital Concierge's website, they do a great job presenting the various products and services that they offer to their clients.
Here’s their story of how they closed 19 clients in two months using Vendasta.
What is Vendasta?
Vendasta provides an end-to-end ecommerce platform to experts, like Digital Concierge, who deliver digital products and services to local businesses worldwide.
The Toolkit Strategy
It all begins with their products and the way they offer them - it is the foundation for their success. They rely heavily on using two separate packages. The first is called the Toolkit Express 2021, and the second is the Toolkit Pro 2021.
The Toolkit Express 2021 is a free 30-day trial that all new clients can easily get started with directly from their website store.
This is the hook.
The Toolkits represent a great product-led approach to selling. When done properly, like the way Digital Concierge is doing here, it’s an extremely cost-effective way to bring on new customers with very little cost or effort.
They use the Toolkit Express 2021 package as a product-led sales tool and to help them segment their prospects and clients within the Vendasta Platform.
All of the clients that have the Toolkit Express 2021 activated on their accounts are prospects, and Derek and Justin know this. They also know that the clients that have the Toolkit Pro 2021 activated are paying clients.
What is product-led growth (PLG)?
According to the Product-Led Growth Collective, founded by Appcues in 2019, product-led growth is a business methodology in which user acquisition, expansion, conversion, and retention are all driven primarily by the product itself.
They use the Toolkit Express 2021 package as a product-led sales tool and to help them segment their prospects and clients within the Vendasta Platform.
All of the clients that have the Toolkit Express 2021 activated on their accounts are prospects, and Derek and Justin know this. They also know that the clients that have the Toolkit Pro 2021 activated are paying clients.
They have set sales nurture tasks using Vendasta Task Manager and leverage Automations in Vendasta to manage their follow-up with prospects during the month. Digital Concierge works with their prospects to help them realize value with the free toolkit before upgrading them to the pro version.
They also offer a wide range of other products and services through their Store, but the main gateway to business value is through these toolkit packages.
The Toolkit Express 2021 offers eight different products and services in an all-in-one package. These included products range from the Website Express, to Listing Builder and Reputation Management Express, to Social Marketing Express and Advertising Intelligence.
Expand your offering
Quick wins with these products come from creating a website for those who don’t already have one, or updating, and ensuring consistency of business information across multiple online platforms including Google Business Profile, Facebook, and Instagram. Clients are also able to get an overview of their online reviews, and be able to manage their online reputation with ease - something all local businesses quickly understand is valuable in this day and age. They’re also able to manage their social media and advertising across most major social media platforms from one single dashboard that is completely whitelabeled under the Digital Concierge brand.
These Toolkits get clients engaging with Digital Concierge’s platform and understanding the value that it provides them. The biggest selling features that Digital Concierge leverages are the fact that this is consolidating products or services that the local business might already be paying for and further extends the functionality.
Digital Concierge is growing quickly because they’re using the Toolkits as a product-led growth strategy.
Want product-led growth for your business?
Prospecting
During the course of their careers, Derek and Justin have tried various ways to source new prospects and get the conversation started with them.
Cold outreach can work for some, but they’ve found that by first focusing on friends, family, past clients and asking for referrals, they’ve been able to garner much more success.
How did they do this?
- By selecting a niche that they can focus on, which, for Digital Concierge, is real estate.
- Building out a list of roughly 100 businesses that their family or friends either own themselves, work at, or have a connection with.
- Reaching out to those companies either through the referral, or by a simple cold call.
- Kicking off their pitch by creating a free Snapshot Report for the prospect and inviting them to review it together.
Once someone is interested in hearing more, it’s presentation time.
The Presentation
If you'd like to get access to their sales deck as well as a series of in-depth tutorial videos outlining their entire product-led sales process, simply fill out the form.
Derek and Justin like to start off the presentation by asking the prospect questions that help them better tailor their pitch and design the work plan they’ll be doing with the client.
The questions that they ask are:
- What are you currently doing in digital marketing?
- What services are you currently paying for?
- Who else is helping you with your marketing?
Using the information gathered from these questions, along with insights from the Snapshot Report, Digital Concierge know enough to put together a solid plan for each client.
While some clients may market themselves without having a solid management of Listings and Reputation Management, Digital Concierge ensures these core fundamentals are in place before executing an SEO strategy such as blog writing or running ad campaigns.
Running ad campaigns with no online presence may work, but interested buyers typically check online for reviews on your business before considering a purchase. Some businesses find themselves spending money on ads that end up giving sales to their competitors because of this.
After that part is done, they move onto:
The Pre-Interview Concept
This considers how the prospects’ customers pre-interview them before meeting or making a purchase. 93% of consumers say that online reviews influenced their purchase decisions. An online presence and managing your reviews is the best way to put the right foot forward with their prospective customers.
The pre-interview is done by customers every day. Having a comprehensive website that gives them the information they need, shows value, differentiation, and answers their questions, plus has posted customer reviews that demonstrate these things is, in fact, a necessity in today’s day and age.
The Customer Journey
The buying journey outlined in the graphic below details the story of how a customer goes from awareness to advocacy, and the various channels that a company can leverage to encourage potential customers through these stages.
Digital Concierge’s clients might not know what a typical buying journey looks like. When showing and explaining it to their prospects, they’re better able to explain how the software that they provide will help the client win and retain more customers.
Protip: Digital Concierge only shows the Listings, Reputation, Reviews, Social Media, and Website portions of the report, leaving out Ecommerce, SEO and Ads sections. They explain why in videos you can access through here.
After that, it’s closing time.
Closing Time
To close the deal, they load up the Store package page for the Toolkit Pro 2021 and walk a client through it, then ask them to choose between one of two options:
- $180/month for the “do it yourself” deal (Toolkit Pro 2021), or,
- $280/month for the “we do it” deal (Toolkit Pro 2021) with the “Digital Concierge Service” add-on for $100 if they don’t want to do the work themselves.
Generally, there are three different approaches that channel partners have when working with clients. They can either offer solutions that are:
- Do it yourself (DIY) - when the customer would do the work themselves.
- Do it with me (DIWM™) - when the customer and Digital Concierge share the work.
- Do it for me (DIFM) - when Digital Concierge does the work for the customer.
Digital Concierge does not offer a DIWM™ approach because it takes too much time to execute. It’s a better business approach for them to spend less time going back and forth with each and every client.
Once a client has selected an option, Digital Concierge then walks them through additional available options, including Blog Posts or G Suite Basic accounts.
Once they’ve determined what the client wants, Digital Concierge requests that a client purchase the Toolkit Pro 2021 themselves through the Store right there on the spot and use Vendasta Payments to handle the payment processing.
Onboarding
Typically, a follow-up video call is scheduled to walk a client through the Business Center, Executive Center, Business Profile, Listings, Reputation Reviews, Customer Voice, Social Media, Website, and the Store.
It’s a matter of setting clients up for success to make sure they know how to use the software properly.
It’s also an opportunity to start talking about other add-ons that may add value once they’ve moved onto the next stage, so to speak. Once an online presence is nailed down, they move onto building a social media presence, an SEO strategy, and eventually running ad campaigns.
There’s a certain progression that needs to take place with clients in order for them to realize the full potential and value that Digital Concierge brings to clients through the Vendasta platform.
What’s your sales process like?
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