Why Your Sales & Marketing Must Be Diversified If You Want To Grow

Our special guest today is James Harper with AgencyFlare. He is going to dig into all things sales and cold outreach to help you level up your game. This is a conversation you do not want to miss.

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Why Your Sales & Marketing Must Be Diversified If You Want To Grow

Tim Fitzpatrick: As much as a lot of us don't like to think it, I think we all know that sales and marketing is critical to the success of your business. If you're going to thrive, you've got to have strong sales and marketing. And that is why today I have a special guest with me and we're going to dig into everything, sales and cold outreach to help you level up your game. You do not want to miss this. Hi, I'm Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the right plan. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I'm super excited to have with me James Harper with AgencyFlare. James, thanks for taking the time.

James Harper: Tim, I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. Well, it's always nice to have a fellow Coloradan on the mic with me. I don't get to do that very often, so.

James Harper: Yeah, absolutely. Go Broncos.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So, yes, yes. So before we jump into all this sales and cold outreach stuff, I want to ask you some rapid-fire questions. Help us get to know you a little bit. You ready to jump in?

James Harper: Let's go.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Cool. So when you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

James Harper: With my two sons. One's four. One's just about a year old. And my wife.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's a good thing. And they grow up fast dude, so don't miss a minute.

James Harper: That's what I hear.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's your hidden talent?

James Harper: Connecting people.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's another that's a good talent to have. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

James Harper: Uh, from my father. What good is a man's yes if he can't say no.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I like that. I've never heard that one. I will have to remember that one. What's one thing about you that surprises people?

James Harper: I think the fact that, that's a really good one, I think the fact that I can almost dunk a basketball for only being 5'10.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Damn man, I'm impressed.

James Harper: Yeah, I used the keyword almost. It can't be a full-size basketball.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. OK, so if it's a small mini one, you can?

James Harper: Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Dude, I don't even think I can jump half that high and I'm about the same height. So what does success mean to you?

James Harper: I really just means it means freedom ultimately. But I like to say happy, joyous, and free. If you experience those on a day-to-day basis, that's success in my eyes.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yep. Yeah. Kind of reminds me of success is it's not the destination. It's the journey, right?

James Harper: Yeah, totally. 100 percent true.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Where is your happy place?

James Harper: My happy place is with family on a quiet lake fishing.

Tim Fitzpatrick: And what qualities do you value in the people with whom you spend time with?

James Harper: Accountability. I really value initiative and I value genuine intentions.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. So before we jump into sales outreach, tell us a little bit more about you, what you're doing at AgencyFlare.

James Harper: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks again. I'm super excited for our conversation. So born and raised here in Denver, Colorado, I've always kind of been an entrepreneur. I learned pretty early on that I didn't want to have a quote-unquote, "real job." And I like to say I'm unemployable. And I always looked for the perfect career path and never was really able to find it. So therefore, it kind of forced my hand into starting businesses, forced my hand into sales. And now you fast forward I'm 32 years old and I've been doing my own thing for quite a while now. And I'm on my this is actually officially business number for at AgencyFlare and we're an outsource business development sales agency. So essentially, if there's a B2B company out there and they're looking to hire a business development person, they might consider outsourcing. That's when we enter the conversation.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it. So you're doing cold email outreach, cold calls for clients.

James Harper: Yeah, exactly. So we take them. I used to say we take your clients from cold to clothes, but really it's we help you develop a strategy and execute that strategy for someone who has no idea who you are or what you do. But you know that you can do good business for them, understand what you do, understand who you are, set up that opportunity, and hone that opportunity to actually become a workable relationship.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So you mentioned B2B sales. Those are primarily the types of clients you work with. What else what other attributes do your best clients have?

James Harper: Yeah. Well, actually to even nitch it up a little bit more, we typically just work in what we call the facility services space, the commercial services space. So we work with a ton of commercial cleaning companies, crime scene cleanup companies, disinfection companies across the board and then commercial roofing companies. So more specifically, we're really in facilities management. We've worked with tech and software and currently working with, like a real estate company. Those are kind of what we call family friend referrals. But we really wanted to become thought leaders in a specific space. And ultimately, that's commercial facility services, very niche. And the reason we did that is because it's so critical to understand the industry you're selling in that we wanted all of our STRs, our sales reps to become industry experts. Now, that's not saying that we wouldn't work with someone we believe we could absolutely win for. And then we dedicate ourselves to learn about that industry. But to help just our mental bandwidth, we wanted to really sell and approve an industry we knew we could get results.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I love it. So you had mentioned that you're on business number four. You sold a couple of the service businesses that you bootstrapped. Tell us what was that like? Why did you decide to sell all that good stuff?

James Harper: Absolutely. And I love talking about this because it's probably on my career so far and some of the most fun times I've ever done is selling a business. If you and I don't think it gets talked about enough on a small scale. We hear about the big-time mergers and acquisitions all across the board, but we don't hear enough about the small service-based businesses that get acquired and then what that company does after. And that happens every single day and it gets zero attention. So the two companies I've had the privilege and I do consider it a privilege to sell, one was a service-based marketing agency, just kind of your typical Google AdWords, SEO, social media marketing company that was called Go Edison and sold to an awesome father and son duo down in Nashville, Tennessee. We had two full-time employees at the time. Both of them, almost two years later, are still employed with the company and probably have a better life today as they did when I was running it. And that's ultimately the goal. And so that's awesome. And then the other one, who is actually just a small bootstrap CBD company that I ran in conjunction with my marketing agency, I like to say I was selling CBD before that was even a term. People didn't know what CBD was based, they heard the word CBD, they still thought it was marijuana. And there was it was still quote-unquote "not legal across the board" so the reason why I sold that company, I guess to answer your question is because at the time I was in the industry and this is a typical case, probably selling a company and maybe a little bit too soon, there was so much attrition just to sell online. Like now you can sell, buy and sell CBT online like it's nothing. Back in the day, PayPal would freeze accounts. I mean, it was really kind of like the Wild West and we got an offer that we couldn't refuse for a side gig. And so coming up on a quick big lump sum of cash as a side gigs always cool. So we took that deal. Our marketing agency, which is more of the traditional acquisition route, that was definitely a process. And we sold that because we were bumping our head up against the max monthly revenue we thought we could support with two employees. I knew that if we wanted to double down, it would take risk that I wasn't willing to put on. I was a 50-50 equity owner with a business partner and we to this day are still best friends and I love them to death. But I just felt like it was time for us to turn the page and start a new chapter. And we kind of always talked about if we got to a certain revenue level, let's try to sell if we got the price we wanted, and lo and behold, it all fell into place. People have held stories selling a business. Both my experiences have been awesome. So the only piece of advice I would give is it's definitely worth it. Working with the business broker, that doesn't get enough credit that 10%, 5%, whatever you pay your business broker hours at least made up for it completely in the back end.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. OK, so I was going to ask you that. So did you do work with the business broker on both of those deals?

James Harper: Yeah. So the first one was so, such a smaller scale, if you will. And we just got such an aggressive offer right out the gate. And it was a pretty simple transaction. You buy our inventory, our customer list, our website, our digital assets, our brand, and we'll give you this amount of money for it. And we just we got a legal document in place and pretty much just did a statement of sale. It was super easy. I knew with a model like our marketing agency that was on a reoccurring basis, we had multiple clients. We had non-competes, we had employees. It was going to be a lot more complex. So that's actually when we went to a business broker, found one here locally in Colorado. At first, I just wanted the answer, "Hey, how much is our business even worth? I want to get I want to get this." And for a service-based business, revenue doesn't really matter. It's all about profit, profit margin and what you as the owner, as the founder, the time put in versus the time put out, like, how involved are you? Are you an owner-reliant service business? Are you not? So those are things that you have to that play for you or they play against you. So long story short, we got our valuation. We were happy with the valuation and we got right out the gate, we had like 6 offers which gave us a lot of leverage to really negotiate a higher price. And we ended up with a lot of businesses will list for a certain price and they say expect to take 20 to 25% less than what you list for. We took 94% of our listing price. So at the end of the day, I'll also add this, Tim, sorry we ran this together, but we also got to consider deal structure when selling a business. You hear about multimillion-dollar execs that are not always what that number ends up being. Is it a full cash offer? It's similar, just like a house, right? Is someone taking out a business loan and they're going to give you an earn-out, which means you have certain incentives to hit. Like maybe you'll get half down and then you'll get the other half over 5, 10 years if the business grows X amount year over year, well, then you're still involved or you're still hoping luck's on your side. So deal structures really important. So we actually, in our case, got really we were fortunate. We got the best offer and it was a cash offer. And then how much time are you involved in the business after selling? Our training period was 6 weeks. And to this day I listen. I'm still friends with the owners of my former company and I wish them nothing but success. So that's not the case for a lot of people. But I think that's what the value of working with a broker is. They bring the right people to the table.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I think there's two really important things to pull out of what you just said. One is, if you're going to sell your business, this is not the time to, like, worry about trying to save money, get professionals involved, because there are so many people that we like we don't know what we don't know and there are a lot of holes that you can go down that you really don't need to. So business brokers, CPA, attorney, those are all people that I think you want to get involved to make sure that you've got visibility to everything that is really, really important. The other thing that I think is really key in what you said is talking about price and terms. One of my business mentors talks about, look, when you're selling, buying or selling a business, there's price and there's terms and usually you cannot get both. So you got to look at price, look at terms and figure out what you really want. And you can use those to negotiate to get a Win-Win deal for everybody that's involved, so.

James Harper: Really well said. And a good business broker will bring all those players to the table if they're worth anything. So, yeah, terms and price. Those are the two key things that I would almost argue, that terms and deal structure almost mean more than price because that impacts the price ultimately.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about cold sales outreach. A lot of us do not like it. We probably avoid it like the plague. What types of activity actions can make cold sales outreach more effective, easier, simpler? Let's dig into it.

James Harper: Yeah, cold outreach is a funny thing. It's something that we all, I think internally want to avoid, but all internally know that we ultimately need to do for our business to grow. I was there once upon a time. My very first ever client at my marketing agency, literally came from a cold call because I didn't know where to go to get clients once my family and friend referrals ran out. So what type of activities in action make cold outreach more effective? It really comes down to what you guys say a lot, Tim is having a plan in place. You need to have a set strategy before you go into any type of strong cold outreach activity. The reason is that's not just a cliche is you can mess up cold outreach really, really substantially and stick out like a sore thumb. You need to do cold outreach the right way. And that right way is being personal with your outreach, you have to understand your prospects' pain points. You have to know exactly who what we call your ICP is, your ideal client profile. Who is that? What what do they do? What do they want? What are they struggling with? Like, you really have to have some value to bring to the table when you're trying to start a conversation with someone who has no idea what you do, who you are and why it should be you to help them. You have to bring some value right off the table. So you have to know who you reaching out to. You have to be personal with that outreach and you really have to make it a good experience. You have to be selling the entire part, the entire experience, not just the sale. So if I reach out to you, for instance, on LinkedIn or email, is it formatted correctly to where it's understandable, it's concise, it gets the point across, or does it feel overwhelming if it feels overwhelming in the first few touch points, you think I ever want to get to the table with you and talk business? Probably not. Our how are we actually teeing up our cold outreach to make our prospects feel, understand, see what we're the picture we're trying to paint? You have to be selling the entire part of the process, and I think that's often missed.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Are you? One of the things that essentially came up yesterday in a conversation that I was having with a group that I'm in and we were talking about outreach, and one of the guys was saying, "Look, we need to focus, we need to meet people where they're at and we need to ask for the next simple step." Like too many people come in just at 60 miles an hour, too much information. They're not meeting people where they're at. All we want is like in that first outreach. It's like we just need a sign of life, like, are you here? Let's start getting some dialog and interaction. What are your thoughts on that?

James Harper: I think that's really well said by whomever said that in your group yesterday. Meet people where they're at. Absolutely. I think there's a few key things that we need to look for when it comes to cold outreach. OK, one, we have to have our plan, like we just mentioned and all of that. But then once we start. Implementing that plan, are we looking for what I call cold buyer signals. Now, maybe that's the wrong term, but I just did this training actually with our staff a few weeks ago. And it is just so impactful that we look for any type of, as you called it, life and engagement throughout our outreach. For instance, I might send you an email, Tim, and it's completely cold, but let's say I'm selling a solution that you need. But whatever you're busy, you don't want to spend money. Life's coming at a million miles per hour. It was a good touch point. But you're you're busy, right? You opened it on your phone. You're driving. You're on the go. You don't get back to me. But let's say I'm monitoring that and I see that. OK, you open it at 12:00 p.m., maybe at 9:00 p.m., you go back and you open that email. What's that mean? Was it an accident that Tim went back or let's say even 4 or 5 days past 9:00 p.m. at night? The days died down. You're checking your emails from the day or getting caught up on all the busy tasks that slipped by us all of a sudden. Does that mean something that Tim opened up that email at 9:00 p.m. at night a few days later? I'd say so. I think there's some intentionality there. Right? And it's on our part with a cold campaign to make sure we have the correct follow-up after a buying signal like that happens to make ourselves visible again. So maybe you open that up at 9:00 pm at night and then the next morning I just give you a call and say, "Hey, Tim James here, I know I'm calling you out of the blue, sent you an email. Just wanted to see if you got it and not trying to get any airtime right now. But what it makes sense for me to send you an email and try to get some time next week?" Right? Like all of a sudden, like, my timing's really good because you showed me some sort of life. Now, maybe there's something there, maybe there's not. But we have to look for any type of engagement and we have to have a follow up sequence in place once we get that engagement. That's where people are missing. We rely too heavily on automation. But people don't like the manual outreach. Why? Because it feels like useless, wasted time, because we're not getting the instant result. We're in the world of instant gratification. The D.M. the notification. We're not getting that in the cold outreach world. Sometimes it could be weeks without any sign of life and continuous follow-up, but then all of a sudden that follow-up comes through. An email response is had and says, "You know what, James? I would like that." And there's a six figure deal on the table that could be life changing. Would you say it's worth it then? Absolutely. But we're not patient enough with the end result. So the biggest thing I think we need to really look at Tim, when it comes to our sales and marketing is not just buying signals and cold engagement, we absolutely need to look at that and then have a plan in place, once that happens, we need to get a yes or no. Everyone on your prospect list. You need to get a yes or no from or not right now. And if we get a no, we thank them, we make a connection and we try to add value to their life and add them to our network in a different way. I know. I know it doesn't have to be a negative. But and a yes can just be like, "Yes, I'm interested but maybe it's not next quarter." At least we have direction on next step. So and that kind of goes back to what, what your colleague or friend was saying. So yeah, I think there's so many facets that play into a good cold outreach campaign that it's hard and tedious work to manage.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. You know, so there's a couple of things I want to dig into here, because I think you have some really good point. Automation like so many of us, want to immediately try to automate some of this stuff. And I think that it is really difficult to effectively personalized automated outreach to a certain extent. Like I'll give you a perfect example, I was on a podcast a while ago and, you know, their whole goal is to interview people that are potential ideal clients, and then they follow up with them after the podcast. Dude, they are it's ruthless follow-up. I mean, the follow-up is I mean, they're consistent, but I mean, emails, text messages. I think I've even gotten some phone calls and it's like totally not appropriate for based on how we left the conversation. So it's like we left this conversation. I got put into some outreach sequence that has no relevance to me whatsoever. So I don't even know how I got in there. And to me, when that happens, that is not making your company look good. It's not portraying a strong reputation. And I mean, it's they're never going to close me. So, you know. How do you balance that automation with personalization and then following up manually in an appropriate manner?

James Harper: I think it really actually starts with intention. What's your intent here like? And we have to remember what I like to call the human element. The human element has to play a part in your business. And if it doesn't, it's going to show it's like you in that automation sequence. You don't feel like a human. You feel like you're just getting the scheduled 2 P.M. text message follow-up. And you did a podcast with these people and now they're trying to prospect you. That whole thing just it's off putting, right? So we have to ask ourselves, are we training people and reaching out to people how we would want to be treated and reached out to? It's literally that simple. As a sales guy, I like to say I'm the easiest sell in the world. One, because I understand, like, for instance, I had some guy come to come knock on my door the other day and I could tell he mustered up the courage, came and knocked on my door, and I gave him the time of day because, you know, I'm a sales guy. I get that, right? But then I also politely said, "Hey, I don't want to waste your time. I'm a sales guy myself. I appreciate you kind of doing your thing, but I'm going to give you the no, right now. Right off the bat." But it was cool. It wasn't a negative experience, right.?But, you know, he came at me in a cool way and said, "Hey, listen, I'm new to this." Like, I respect that. You know, I respect that transparency. The automation world, though, since we're more on the online side of things, it just gets too convoluted with it. Now, all of a sudden, we feel like we're just part of the cycle and you never want to feel like another number to the process. And that sounds like that's what it's like with what you're experiencing right now. And automation should save us time. It doesn't close deals. And that's just the truth. If you're selling a high ticket, if you're in B2B sales, you're selling a service that costs a little bit of money. People still buy from people. We want to do business with people we work with. I still want to feel good after I make a purchase. Prime example, I just bought a $2300 couch. To me, that's an expensive ass couch. And they spelled my name wrong and I got all this and she wouldn't correct it. And for whatever reason I didn't feel good about that. So like now every time I get like this company's follow up automation, it's with a misspelled name all across the board. And I'm not trying to be petty, but it just feels weird after even after I pointed it out. But as soon as I handed over my credit card or whatever, dude they went to town. It's done. Boom. I was a transaction. How did that make me feel? Not great. I can tell you in 10 years when I need a new couch, I'm not going there again. I'll remember that feeling people one hundred percent of people still buy with emotion. We can't avoid that. So how are you making people feel? Automation, automation if it stands out like a sore thumb, like we said earlier, it doesn't feel great.

Tim Fitzpatrick: And look, most of us can see, right through. We know it's an automated message. OK, so, I mean, it hasn't gotten good enough where we're like, "Oh, somebody actually personally typed that out." No, that doesn't happen. So at least at this point, we I totally agree with you. We got to find ways to make it personal. And no matter how good your plan is, things aren't always linear. Sometimes they're going all over the place and your follow-up process has to have some leniency and the ability to adapt to that so that you can still do it effectively.

James Harper: Yeah, well said, man. Totally agree.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, cool. Well, let's talk about diversifying with sales and marketing, because I think this is a really, really important thing. I think I'm sure you saw this when you were in marketing. You see it in sales. There are a lot of businesses that are heavily reliant on one channel for most of their leads. Why do we need to diversify and how do we go about it?

James Harper: Yeah, I think it is really kind of overlooked step to the growing of a business process, right? We find something that works and naturally we want to double down on it, as you should. But with that being said, just like we want to you here, diversify your investments, diversify your revenue, you hear that a lot in the finance game and in your personal life, well, you absolutely have to do that when it comes to your lead generation, because if a pipeline runs dry, all of a sudden you get hit with the reality of I don't know where my next new client or new line of business is going to come from. And that's a dark reality. And having a dry pipeline, bringing that back to life sometimes is almost twice the work. Then just setting up an omni channel approach, which can bring you multiple leads. I'll say this, the importance of diversifying to me is pretty simple. I want to be able to collect potential business from here. I want to collect potential business from here. And then, oh, by the way, if those two shut down, I want to have even maybe a third and fourth backup plan, right? The more the merrier, I guess. But how do we implement that is another piece of the puzzle here. There's this big sales versus marketing talk out there in the world. And I really think in many ways they're one of of the same. And this is where salespeople would beat me up and marketing guys will roar me for saying this. But it's true. I think businesses do marketing to increase sales revenue. I think that majority, 90% of the time that's the case.

James Harper: And marketing needs to be pushing the awareness to help salespeople sell better and more effectively. Over the last 10, 15 years, marketing has now been accountable for inbound lead generation. And I still do think that's a new piece to the equation here this last decade that now marketing now needs to push awareness and inbound leads and then your sales process needs to be fluent with your marketing strategy to where you can sell those inbound leads, convert that and capitalize on top of your marketing strategy. And then salespeople need to be set up from a marketing perspective. Are we speaking the same language? Are our presentations or fliers, we're leaving out our prospects desks on brand looking uniformed with all of our marketing out there? There's still this big disconnect. And we need to stop the marketing versus sales war and kind of come together. And I'll fight any salesperson that wants to speak different about that.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I'll be your backup. So I think it's like you said, it's not sales versus marketing. It's sales and marketing. And the way I view it is the job of your marketing is to get those people that have a need or a problem you can solve to know, like, and trust you. And if your marketing is working, it is going to be a clean handoff from marketing to sales. And sales has a warm lead that's already like there. They already have one foot in the water. They're like almost there. And that makes the sales process that much easier. And I think one of the things that I see happening in that handoff is where people are breaking down is the communication. The message that they're communicating on the sales side is different than the marketing side, and it cannot be that way. That's why we got to be on the same page. Otherwise, it's going to break down and you're going to people are going to fall out of that lead flow. So, yes, super, super important. To me they go hand in hand. They're their brother and sister, how are you going to put it? Super important. How many of your leads coming from one channel do you think is too much or have you ever really thought about that?

James Harper: Yeah, I would. Well, I like to say if you're starting to approach that 30 to 50% mark, maybe 30% doesn't sound like that much. But if all of a sudden you lost 30% of your revenue, would you freak out? Absolutely you would. So I think if you're between that 30 to 50% mark, they say never have a client that's 30% of your revenue, blah, blah, blah, you know, maybe apply that to lead generation. I've never thought of it in that context. That's a really well thought out question. But I would say, man, if we don't want our revenue to be held by more than 30% from one client, I would almost say the same should apply to your lead generation.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I think you're I think your thought process there is spot on because it's if you lost 30% of your revenue, would you freak out? What kind of changes would have to happen in your business to absorb something like that?

James Harper: Yes.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's why diversifying and taking an omnichannel approach to your sales in your marketing, I think is so, so important. And early on, you kind of mentioned, you know, three or four different channels. I think that that is a good mix. I think it's totally OK. A lot of businesses start out and like referral. They're like one hundred percent referral.

James Harper: Sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's a totally OK place to start. But I think at some point you need to start to diversify if you want to have more consistency and dependability in your business, because referral sources can they're just not super predictable and it's not a scalable way to grow. So you're going to reach a point where you hit a ceiling and if you want to keep growing, you got to start to diversify into other channels to generate leads. I actually have a buddy that works for a commercial construction management company and their company, their CFO, is like 10% from any one customer, too much. So they're even on the super conservative side of that. I actually talked to a lead a while back. This is probably two years ago. They had just gotten they just been bought. 80% of their business was from one client. And I was like, "Oh, my God, I cannot believe this company got bought." Thatis like, wow, super. That is just a very vulnerable place to be. So, yeah, I absolutely think that diversifying is key. James, you've shared some awesome stuff with us today. Any last minute thoughts that you want to share with us?

James Harper: Yeah, I would just say when it comes to cold outreach, that's kind of like what I'm known for right now. And actually it's what I'm kind of strangely passionate about is like the chase. I know. It doesn't have to be as tough as I think people make it seem. If we were to reach out to 100 people a week, let's say that's 400 people a month and really break that down, you could, are you willing to send 20 personalized emails? Maybe you're going off of a small template a day or LinkedIn message, 20 people a day. Is that worth an hour and a half of your day to make a life-changing deal? I'd say so. And that's another thing I want to put out there in the universe is that we need to stop looking at cold outreach as appointment setters and Telemarketers. A good cold outreach plan is just a really great business development plan because you're planting seeds that might not convert right now when we're selling a big business, high ticket service or product or item. I mean, the truth is, Tim, if I'm reaching out to you, you might be in a contract you might not be ready to buy right now. But if I provide some value or some reason for us to stay connected, who knows, maybe 14, and this is the truth that a lot of business owners want to hear 14 months down the road. If we do our due diligence and we play our cards right, we might have a shot at winning business from that prospect. But are we going to be patient enough with the process because we're so wrapped up into the notification world that instant gratification. Is the appointment set? And I think we also need to look at, hey, are we not only getting right now opportunities? Are we planting seeds for future opportunities that again play to that pipeline never being dry?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I love it. James, where can people learn more about you? You've shared a ton of awesome stuff with us. If people need sales outreach help, where should they go?

James Harper: Yeah, I appreciate you having me on again. If anyone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, just James Harper and AgencyFlare dot com, that's our company, all things sales, really, though, if you just want to go to AgencyFlare dot com, we try to do our best at putting out content that's actionable and pertains to you. Any type of sales entrepreneur or business owner. So AgencyFlare dot com. But I'm also happy to connect with whomever on LinkedIn. And yeah, I really appreciate the opportunity here today, Tim.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Absolutely man. So if you guys need help with sales outreach, please reach out to James. Pop on over to AgencyFlare. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to tune in. If you want to gain clarity on where to focus your marketing efforts right now, hop on over to our website. Rialto marketing dot com. That's R-I-A-L-T-O marketing dot com. Click on the get a free consult button. Be happy to chat with you and give you some clarity on where you need to focus right now to get the best return. Til next time. Take care.

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About the Host?Tim Fitzpatrick

Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people. Marketing shouldn't be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.