[Top Agency Series] Building Sales Teams for Strategic Business Growth With Scott Scully

Scott Scully is the Founder and CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a B2B lead generation and business growth agency. In this role, he has led the company to become one of the most successful privately held marketing startups in the St. Louis region. Over the past 28 years, Scott has started, invested in, or played a major role in several companies in the marketing and lead generation space, three of which have exceeded $12 million in annual revenue. He is also the co-host of The Grow Show, a podcast for business leaders and entrepreneurs with a growth-driven mindset.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Scott Scully talks about Abstrakt Marketing Group and its outsourced sales services
• How to elevate outreach efforts to book more appointments
• The key components of a sales script
• Scott describes Abstrakt’s exclusive sales club and how he determines exclusivity
• Common sales calling mistakes
• Training teams to facilitate outreach efforts
• Abstrakt’s strategic hiring process — and Scott’s thoughts on hybrid work models
• How Scott encourages his sales teams following rejection
• Developing service niches and infrastructure for business growth
• Scott discusses his company’s recent acquisition and podcast

In this episode…

Predictable sales pipelines are integral to any successful business. Yet many companies struggle to make persuasive sales pitches and optimize their outreach efforts to generate prospects. So what are the best sales practices to grow your business?

Scott Scully instructs sales teams to conduct outreach strategies through outbound sales calls, website building, and email campaigns. Before implementing any strategy, defining your target market and identifying a niche for your services is crucial. Outreach efforts require strategic customer interactions, so Scott recommends developing sales scripts with a compelling pitch that communicates your value proposition.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Scott Scully, Founder and CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, about sales strategies for business growth. Scott also talks about facilitating outreach efforts to book sales calls, the key components of a sales script, and how to develop service niches and operational infrastructure for business growth.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Scott Scully on LinkedIn
• Abstrakt Marketing Group
• The Grow Show Podcast

Special Mention(s):

• Second Bite Podcast
• Jeffrey Gitomer

Books Mentioned: 

• The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan

Related episode(s):

• “Master Your Craft With Jay Papasan of The 1 Thing”
• “How to Hire A-Players and Build a Great Company with Chris Mursau of Topgrading”
• “[Top Agency Series] Most Valuable Advice When Selling Your Agency With Todd Taskey of Potomac Business Capital” 
• “[Top Agency Series] Expanding Your Brand Impact Through Social With Duncan Alney of Firebelly Marketing”

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:15 

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22 

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have Scott Scully of Abstrakt Marketing Group, you could check it out at abstraktmg.com. And, Scott, before I formally introduce you, I’m going to mention a couple episodes people should check out of the podcast. And since you have an amazing growing, thriving team, and we’ll talk a little bit about, you focus a lot about how do you retain a players? And how do you attract a players, there was an interview I did with Chris Mursau who’s the CEO of Topgrading, and that’s what they talk about. How do you attract and retain a players and people heard of the book. So check out the interview I did with Chris also, I did an interview with Todd Taskey, who helps connect agencies to private equity when they’re ready to sell and he has a Second Bite Podcast is a great podcast and we’ll be talking about acquisitions on this with Scott as well. So that’s an appropriate interview to check out with Todd Taskey. We’ll also talk about niches, Scott has been a master of going into different niches and I had Duncan Alney on who started Firebelly Marketing and he really focused on the food and beverage space he niche down in that. So before we get into it, this episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and how do we do that we help you run your podcast, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do accountability, strategy and full execution of a podcast. And for me, Scott, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. So I’m looking forward to hearing your sales enablement approach. But I found no better way to do that than to profile the people and companies I most admire and profile them and shout from the rooftops and let the world know what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about starting podcasts, you should if you have questions go to rise25.com happy to answer them. And I want to formally introduce Scott Scully CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, he started invest in several companies over the past 28 years. And his main focus has been in the marketing and lead generation space with three companies exceeding $12 million in annual revenue. And his current venture Abstrakt Marketing Group has grown by a minimum of 20% over the last 12 years straight. And they surpassed or $50 million dollars in revenue in 2021. And they’re still growing. And he attributes his success, which we’ll dig into to niche focus. Great team members and business partners, sound processes and innovative workplace culture. So Scott, thanks for joining me.

Scott Scully 3:16 

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it.

Jeremy Weisz 3:18 

So, just tell people a little bit about Abstrakt Marketing Group and what you do.

Scott Scully 3:23 

Yeah, Abstrakt Marketing Group. We’re in St. Louis, Missouri, we work in every state, we’ve got about 2000 clients, and the best way to look at us is really outsource sales enablement. So we do that hard work that maybe someone doesn’t know how to do, or maybe they don’t want to do it. And it’s all about us helping people build a predictable sales pipeline. So we’ll do everything from building a website and creating content, to connecting on social to, really the biggest piece of what we do is email marketing, and then phone outreach. So we’ve got a couple of 100 people actually on the phone working on behalf of our clients. Find that decision maker and setting up that first sales call. So that’s really the way that I would look at us as an outsourced sales enablement team.

Jeremy Weisz 4:29 

We’re gonna walk through your company and what you actually do because you eat your own dog food with this, but let’s go back to the days when you were on the phone. And I think you said you hated the appointment setting. You liked the actual calls, and you would have a goal of doing 100 outbound calls a week, right so what was your goal at the time? What do you recommend companies out there when they’re like, we want to book more appointments? What’s the amount of calls they have to do to appointments they want to set up?

Scott Scully 5:10 

Well, it was actually more than 100 a week, it was 100 a day. The people that are doing just a phone call piece for us actually make 135 a day, which is about 17 and change an hour. I think that it really depends on what phase of the sales process you’re in. And you have to understand that when we’re running through our sales enablement process, a big part of that outreach may be cleansing, and determining whether or not a company is actually a fit before we get into several dial approach towards an actual decision maker. I think there are some things that are super important that you have your target market defined. You mentioned niches, I’m a huge believer in that being able to come with an expertise in that particular niche and know the chair, they sit in and understand what they’re faced with on a daily basis. We work from an exclusivity perspective, only one in each market. So that enhances the appointment setting script, that’s actually how we been in my entire 28 years, in a niche, only working with one in a particular market. So when I’m on the phone, in the scripting, it is really hey, I’m running our market development process in the Cleveland area. And we’re here within the next couple of weeks talking to the best people in commercial cleaning, you happen to be one of them based on my research coming into the market. And from our 100 clients that are around the country where they sit, when we come to Cleveland, we got to talk to you and so I come from that perspective. And then really build up, why we’re calling them who they are, and why they need to meet with us pretty quickly because it’s coming and then it’s gone. And want to give them the opportunity to take a look at what’s coming to their market, provide feedback and decide whether or not they want to partner. That’s unique, but I do think that no matter what space you’re in product or service, that there’s a variation of that that you could do. That makes it easier to set the appointment and makes it easier to increase your show rates.

Jeremy Weisz 7:48 

So, there’s a great video that you did. It’s like a 15-minute talk, I encourage people to check it out. There’s some components, I love to talk a little bit deeper about some of them, the components of the sales script. Obviously, people don’t love doing this, right. That’s why they hire you. But here’s some of the things that they are doing it now, you talk about the while you talk about part of the club, you talk about exclusivity, accessing someone through an influencer scarcity, and then selling the appointment. Talk about the wild part.

Scott Scully 8:22 

So you have to get their attention clearly right up front. And so I’ve got to figure out what my statement is going to be that makes somebody want to listen. And before even doing that, I always say hey, I know I got in the middle of running your business. So I’ll be brief, right, just pardon the interruption, and just letting them know that I’m going to get through what I’m about ready to say very quickly. And then the reason I’m calling is X and that’s where I need to be pretty powerful. If I’m managed service provider, that there are a lot of managed service providers these days. So why are you different, it’s really about coming up with the differentiator and giving me a good reason why I’d want to talk to you now. So I may happen to be a managed service provider that specializes in cybersecurity, in the automotive industry, right, and then all of a sudden, you’ve got my ear maybe a little bit more than it’s just another managed service provider calling me. So there’s got to be something that makes me want to listen, and then at depending on the industry, there may be a particular case study as well. Something very quick like, hey, we’re able to, I’m gonna get it all wrong as far as cybersecurity goes, but we’re able to protect people’s environments, 27% more protected, uptime people are uptimes two times what it typically is because we happen to specialize in your industry and know what you go through. And then it’s always a question. Tell me how you’re handling your cybersecurity now.

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