Agency Training Lessons with Nick Sal

Nick Salvatoriello, who goes by Nick Sal, is on the HubSpot Academy team. He’d spent four years in HubSpot’s services division when this was recorded, consulting one-on-one with more than 200 new accounts, most of them agency partners, and he produced the Partner Broadcast, HubSpot’s monthly live show for partners, which had just hit 100 episodes. Andrew Dymski hosted this episode, number 21 of Inbound Agency Journey, and Gray MacKenzie joined him for the recap. The first half is about what separates the agencies that succeed; the second is how Nick produces a live show any agency could copy for its clients.

The agencies that succeed take ownership

Andrew’s first question was what sets the successful agencies apart. Nick had been talking about it all week.

They take ownership of their own success and of their own goals. They see us as a resource, but they know if it is to be, it’s going to be up to them to really make it happen… Every agency is given the same equal access to the resources that we have.

(Listen at 03:37)

Some agencies arrive in hard situations, he said, and it’s harder for them, but the ones that succeed climb out anyway. Attitude makes the difference.

Size matters less than the ability to pivot

Andrew asked whether a big traditional agency catching the inbound train behaves differently from a small shop starting as one. Nick’s view: larger agencies carry traditions, turf wars, vested interests and more meetings, but they also have a stable of clients who can be moved up to a premium service. Small teams can get profitable fast.

I was just visiting a 17-person agency, and they’re probably the largest agency that does inbound marketing in the whole Twin City area of Minneapolis, St. Paul. 17 people can do a huge amount of business. You’re talking about a million-dollar run rate… If you are a big agency, you may carve out a division and say, we’re going to do a startup within the startup, but let there be an agile group of people who can pivot and do this thing fast without a bunch of committee meetings.

(Listen at 06:31)

Running the Partner Broadcast: themes a year out, headlines a month out

The Partner Broadcast started because Nick kept sitting in HubSpot’s internal meetings thinking the partners would love to hear this. It’s meant to feel like a town hall for a 3,000-agency network. Andrew asked for the pre-game checklist.

You need to look at the whole year and say, what are sort of the cycles, what are going to be the big themes… If you’re trying to drive towards a specific revenue number, we all should be trying to drive towards specific growth numbers every quarter.

(Listen at 15:01)

About a month out he emails his volunteer news sources in each department. The show runs once a month, so it recaps news instead of breaking it.

We try to get folks to send in short and sweet headlines as to what webinars they did, what articles they wrote, what new resources they launched, and we’ll make sure that this is the one listening post time where if they missed any of that from the month, they’ll hear about it at least the third Thursday of every month.

(Listen at 16:15)

Everything runs off one Google Calendar invite holding the agenda and links, so every update alerts everyone. Slides are due a week out, ideally, and locked two days before the show so he can restyle the deck. The setup is a laptop and a GoToWebinar subscription.

Two recordings, one host, and feedback from the chat window

The lesson he learned the hard way is redundancy.

I learned the hard way, you’ve got to have two recordings. You’ve got to have double redundancy on everything… You’ve got two people logged into the webinar. You’ve got two people hitting the record button, because it definitely happens. If one computer just switches off for whatever reason, you can jump onto the other one as a backup.

(Listen at 17:58)

One person hosts, keeps the energy up and watches the time, and everyone else does their bit. The format has changed with every new producer, and Nick’s rule is to step back quarterly or semi-annually and ask what the show is for and how to get more people to watch.

I just try my best to get the feedback, to look at what showed up in the chat window, emails that people send me before and after, putting in surveys and polls. Let’s just give people what they want. It’s not about what I want at all.

(Listen at 22:36)

You don’t need HubSpot’s resources to do this

Nick’s tools are ordinary: Google Docs and Sheets, the Citrix webinar products (he figures he uses about half of what they can do), Wistia for video hosting and analytics, and the HubSpot blog to build subscribers. The less obvious tool is the people who control the database and the website, since a show only grows if the marketing team wants to promote it. Andrew asked which agencies did this well.

If you look at The Sales Lion, that partner agency, Marcus Sheridan, George Thomas, and that whole crew, they do a fantastic job with this. They keep it very light and easy. Couple of laptops, Skype call recorder, and a couple of less than $100 mics. Marcus Sheridan chimed into one of their episodes from a parking lot outside of Target.

(Listen at 26:37)

He also named Chris Handy at Think Handy, a husband-and-wife agency running several podcasts.

The episode ends with Nick’s pointer to HubSpot Academy’s free inbound certification, open to anyone whether or not they use HubSpot, and the recap where Gray and Andrew talk through building ongoing education for their own clients.