Hey there,
It is Matthew Larsen, back with my newsletter.
Today, we are talking about becoming the person agency clients want to hire before they ever get on a sales call with you.
If you run an agency, you have probably had prospects compare your price with someone else's, question whether your results would work for them, or disappear after a call. You end up trying to make the offer more attractive with a lower price or a crazier guarantee.
Meanwhile, another agency sells essentially the same service and gets treated like the expert.
The service itself has become a commodity. Plenty of people can offer lead generation, advertising, or YouTube services. When you look and sound like all of them, the prospect has very little reason to choose you specifically.
Authority gives them that reason. They recognize your name, understand how you think, and have seen enough of your work to believe you can help. Building that belief takes more than posting generic AI content that makes you look like every other beginner in the feed.
Let's get into how you actually do it.
Choose a subniche you know
First, give yourself a market you can become known in. Trying to become the top person in “business” puts you up against people like Alex Hormozi. Even “agencies” is an enormous subject. Becoming one of the best-known people for a specific problem, inside a specific kind of agency, is a much more practical ambition.
Business is the broad category. Agencies is the niche. Agency lead generation is the subniche: helping agency owners get prospective clients for their own businesses.
You want a subniche you live on a day-to-day basis. Being the kind of person you sell to, or having been that person, is an extreme advantage. You already understand what they are dealing with because you have dealt with it yourself.
I know what problems to address and what videos to make because I am in my own ideal client profile. I understand the business from the inside.
Speak your client's language
That understanding should be obvious in the way you write. People at different levels of business describe similar problems differently. Your videos, emails, and offers should use the language of the people you actually want as clients.
When you describe someone's problem better than they could describe it themselves, you give them a reason to believe you can solve it. The right person should read your email and immediately recognize their situation.
You do not need everybody to find it interesting. If you serve experienced agency owners, some of what you discuss will mean very little to a beginner. That is fine. You are trying to become known among the people who would hire you.
Be your own best case study
Of course, those people will also look at whether you can do the thing you sell. If you offer YouTube services, have 20 subscribers, and get three views on your own videos, you should expect questions. Your own channel is one of the first places a prospect can check your work. Being your own best case study gives them something concrete to judge.
Show how you got your results. Explain what you did in enough detail that someone can understand the work behind them. This also gives you useful content to publish because you are talking about something you actually know.
Look like an expert
Make sure the way you present that work helps you. People form an impression quickly. A grainy camera, bad lighting, and atrocious sound can distract from a good explanation before someone has given it a chance.
Get your camera, lighting, and microphone sorted. Then look at your profiles across every platform. Use a professional photo, a cover image showing a result, and a bio that makes it clear who you help. Your links and content should make it easy to keep learning about your work.
Develop your own philosophy
Once someone is paying attention, they need to hear a point of view worth remembering. Most agency owners struggle here because they repeat the same advice as everybody else. They have no original thoughts, frameworks, or ways of doing things that a prospect can associate with them.
Develop your own philosophy for how to get the result you sell. Explain why you approach the work that way. A reasonable person should be able to follow the explanation and think, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Your content becomes much easier to create when you have that foundation. You can explain different parts of the work and keep tying them back to the same way of thinking. People gradually become familiar with your approach.
It also gives a client more reason to stay. If they use your philosophy to make decisions in their business, the relationship can extend well beyond the first thing they bought from you. That increases their lifetime value: the total amount they spend with you over the relationship. Familiarity with your approach also gives them a reason to choose you at a higher price.
Show the whole process
To make the philosophy useful, show exactly how you apply it. Take a YouTube service. The work includes setting up the channel, choosing ideas, writing titles, designing thumbnails, and creating the opening. Then there are supporting assets, equipment, filming and speaking, editing, uploading, reading the analytics, and improving the next video.
Lay out every part in a detailed free resource. Explain the theory, show examples, and walk through the implementation. Keep going until you have covered the whole service.
For each step, develop a framework: a way to organize the decisions or actions involved so the process is easier to understand. Give it a clear name so people can refer to it and remember how it works. Your philosophy explains why you approach the work this way; the framework helps someone follow the process.
You can then film the resource as a complete course. Depending on the service, that might be anywhere from one to twelve hours. It gives someone a place to go through your approach in depth, whether they found you through an ad, an outreach message, a referral, or your content.
Giving away that much detail can feel strange when you sell the implementation. But plenty of prospects have no interest in doing the work themselves. They want to know that YOU know how to do it.
The resource lets them see that. Someone who wants to understand one part can inspect it. Someone who wants the whole process can watch the course. Even a prospect who never watches a minute can see that you have put together a complete explanation of the subject.
That is useful before a sales call. They have something substantial to judge you by, and they can arrive with a much better understanding of your approach.
Help them get an initial result
You can build even more belief by helping them get an initial result. This is what I mean by an activation point: an action that makes someone more likely to buy because they have experienced some of the value. It could be watching a demonstration, trying the product, or implementing a piece of advice successfully.
In my opinion, the strongest proof is someone taking your advice, using it in their own business, and getting an initial success.
With someone else's case study, they can still say, “That won't work in my niche,” or, “That won't work in my country.” Once they have tried something and it has worked for them, that particular objection is much harder to hold on to.
Your free material should give people enough detail to do something with it. You want them to experience what happens when they follow your advice.
Teach it live
A weekly live webinar gives you another opportunity to explain your approach in depth, especially to prospects who have been following you but still have not bought.
Run the same core webinar repeatedly. Look at the data after each one and improve it. You get better at the explanation through repetition, and the presentation gets better as you learn from it.
Think of a 60-to-120-minute session as a way to cover material someone might otherwise encounter over months of following your content. They can spend that time with you and understand how the pieces fit together.
Being live also gives them a different experience. They see you explain the work without the same opportunity to edit a recording. And if 200 people show up, for example, they can see that other people consider the subject and the person teaching it worth their time.
Keep showing up
Your regular content gives people more opportunities to reach this point. Start with two long-form YouTube videos that solve your ideal client's exact problems, with two newsletters on the same schedule. The email should explain the idea fully for someone who prefers to read it. Over time, people can spend hours learning from you.
Use the video transcripts to create three carousels or long-form posts for places like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube Community. Publish three short insights a day, under 280 characters each, answering specific questions on X and Stories. Share a piece of proof each day, whether that is a client win, a screenshot, or a case study.
The longer material gives you room to explain your thinking. The shorter material lets someone encounter a specific idea or result as they go through their day. You keep showing up with something relevant to the same buyer.
Build an endless wall of proof
As you do this, keep collecting the evidence in one place. I want what is essentially an endless wall of proof. Someone should be able to scroll through your website and keep finding examples of your work.
Include screenshots and detailed case studies. Show client logos and written testimonials with the person's photo, name, company, and a link. Include speaking appearances, podcast or YouTube interviews, and videos explaining how you achieved your own results.
A single screenshot gives a prospect very little to investigate. A substantial collection lets them look deeper. They can find different examples, understand more of your work, and keep seeing evidence that supports what you say.
By the time that person gets on a call, you want them to have a specific reason for wanting to work with you. They understand the problem you solve and how you approach it. They have seen your results. Ideally, they have already used something you taught them and had it work. That gives them much more to base the decision on than your price and whatever guarantee you are willing to offer.
Watch more on my YouTube channel.
Hope this email was worth your time,
Matthew Larsen
PS. Work with me in my Skool group at skool.com/leadgenerationacademy.