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Hey there - it's Brian 👋

This week, we signed THREE contracts.

➟ Cold email
➟ Twitter lead gen
➟ International payroll

So today I’ll share a few tips I wish I knew when I started comparing contractors.

How do you know who’s good? Who’s bad? Should you even use an agency?

We compared 7 agencies and we believe these email + Twitter lead generation agencies will add-on an extra $40k / month.

So it’s worth it if you get it right.

Today I’ll help you choose the right agency to grow your business.

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

Agencies are awesome. If… you choose correctly

There’s one MAJOR problem with agencies…

Anyone can start one.

So most suck.

But the top 5% are incredible.

To filter out the bad ones you’ll need to interview ~5 agencies before you sign.

These agencies will tell you their stats. Write them down in a doc to compare across agencies. I’ll share more on that in a sec.

If you’re starting a new marketing channel, always start with an agency.

You’ll move FAST. You’ll learn what works/what doesn’t.

Then eventually you can take those learnings in-house.

I offshore the marketers. But I’m biased because I have an offshore talent agency so we get good marketing talent.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:
My agency friends are paying $60,000 / year for 1 account manager.

I’m paying $16,800.

This means I can ALSO hire a tech developer and a ghostwriter for the same amount.

The work quality is amazing.

And for LatAm marketers?

Compared to Colombian companies:
One of my closest friends DOUBLED her pay by working for a US company (for $1,400 / month).

It’s a win-win.

I mean, this is our account manager. Our clients love her:

Okay back to evaluating agencies 👇

What metrics should you look for when evaluating agencies?

So for us different agencies tried to impress us with big numbers.

➟ Email sent
➟ Deliverability rates
➟ Show rates from meetings
➟ Expected meetings booked

But all we care about is getting quality customers. That’s it.

So we booked calls with 5 other agencies and kept all these benchmarks in a Google doc.

It made it 1,000x easier to compare who’s good.

So we’d convert the math to CAC (customer acquisition cost).

One agency charged us up to $1,000 per customer. Another down to $350.

How did we estimate CAC?

We estimate a 50% close rate. So how many meetings can they get us per month? Assume half those meetings turn into a sale.

Take your total spend with that agency that month (say it’s $2.5k) / your total number of customers expected for the month (let’s say 3 customers) = $833 CAC.

Write everything down. You’ll quickly forget which agencies have which benchmarks.

So let’s build

If the marketing agency is within your target CAC range, amazing.

But please have 3 - 5 vendor conversations.

It’ll make your life 1,000x easier when you start comparing benchmarks across agencies.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
Twitter
LinkedIn
TalentHQ

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, reply “staffing” if you want offshore talent too.

Or grab time here. Whichever is easier. I’m here to help.

🙋 Vote: How did we do?