Ep 003: Tim Pringle Partnered With Ex-Googler to Drive Phone Calls To SMBs

Tim Pringle is an owner of 50 Free Calls and partnered with ex-google employee who specialized in AdWords. Tim and his partner help dozens of SMBs get more phone calls.Tim's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/50freecalls/Tim's Website: https://50freecalls.com/If you want to watch the video, here ya go:

Full transcription

Tim Pringle: 00:00 Cool. Okay.

Ryan Shank: 00:01 All right guys, episode three. Welcome back. I'm growing your agency. I'm your host, Ryan Shane today. Super excited joining by joining us today. Tim Pringle, 50 free calls. Tim, thank you so much for joining us.

Tim Pringle: 00:16 Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It's pretty cool that we can do this while I'm sitting in Canada. And you're sitting in New York.

Ryan Shank: 00:22 Yeah, apps Canada. Just had some big news happened the other day, right? Yesterday. I'm a non participant in that sport, but uh, it, it uh, it was making the news waves if you guys don't know about cannabis was just a deemed recreational in, in Canada just yesterday. So it is. And you have the big plant behind you. So maybe that reminded me Tim guys. So Tim has an agency, a, an amazing digital marketing agency. Performance. Be Smart. Do you, by the way, do you call it an agency? I've been talking to some people, they're like, I don't like calling it an agency. What are you, what are your thoughts? Don't really call it an agency, but essentially that's what we are. We are an agency for sure. Absolutely. So I want you to, so why don't you do this, tell us how you got started, why, why digital marketing? Why an agency, um, you know, what's the story? So let me explain to you a little bit about

Tim Pringle: 01:18 when we got started. We're in our fifth year in business and when we first got started, my partner worked at Google for seven years. Wow. In Phoenix at an agency level. And he's like, we like to tease him and say he's like the Wayne Gretzky Google, but

Ryan Shank: 01:30 he prefers Michael Jordan because he's American, you know, as marketers and agencies popping up all over the place. But having a partner on the team seven years at Google, that's. I mean, that's got to give you a leg. That's why I,

Tim Pringle: 01:44 that's one of the reasons why I started the company is because this guy is so good at what he does and knows the ins and outs and the secrets and I think he's even met the owners of Google. And so I mean, it doesn't come any a high level or than that.

Ryan Shank: 01:56 That's awesome. So, so when was that? That happened?

Tim Pringle: 01:59 Five years that we're in our fifth year, so that was about seven years ago. I was working for another it company doing some sales and that's when I first met him. I sold a website to a lawyer or a law firm and he said to me, uh, yeah, we'll do the website but I need to get on Google. And I was like, well, I don't know anything about it but I'll find out. So I call Google and then I met my now partner and we just hit it off and connection and off to the races we went. So two years later we worked together on a few projects here and there and then once he left Google we decided to start this agency.

Ryan Shank: 02:30 That's, that's amazing. I think it's so good to surround yourself with people that feel they have their own strengths instead of having, you know, to have the same type of type of strength people. I'm side by side. I just brought on board a VP of engineering. I'm not technical at all. I'm like pure sales and I was swinging way above my weight on a on engineering and product stuff, so I think that makes sense. Bringing the guy, you know, who was at Google for so long onto onto the team, especially in the partner capacity, so five years ago, why, why 50 free calls, why, why these when he was first trying to do,

Tim Pringle: 03:03 explain the concept to me, he kept saying to me on the phone over and over will give the client 53 calls, we'll give them 53 calls, we'll give them 53 calls. And I was trained to. I used to work for Royal Caribbean cruise lines for 10 years. I was trained to listen for auditory cues and he kept saying it over and over and over. So that was something I picked up on right away. So I checked the domain and it was available. So I said, well, I'm going to buy that domain. That's, that's the name of the business. I'm not 100 percent sure why, but uh, there's gotta be something to it. So essentially how it works is it's all based around call recording because all these ads, online ads today can be tracked through your business on and similar businesses, which is recording phone calls that come in via the digital ads. When I first learned that he kept trying to explain it to me. So what we do is we set up the call recording aspect of it, a Google ad words say for instance,

Ryan Shank: 03:55 you guys have your own system. I just want everyone to know not a phone lag in customer. You guys have your own proprietary system you guys are using. So I just want to throw that out there,

Tim Pringle: 04:04 Meghan customer yet. But that doesn't, that's not because of lack of effort. And due to a,

Ryan Shank: 04:08 to Ryan, that's what, yeah,

Tim Pringle: 04:11 we set up the call recording and we recorded the first 50 calls and we offered the fifth first particular recordings for the customer to try out in the call recording for free and that's Kinda how the name was born.

Ryan Shank: 04:23 That's awesome. So, so they get, they get the 50 free call, 50 free call recordings, um, who are your target clients? I just interviewed a guy yesterday, most of his clients actually don't get a lot of phone calls. He works with large ecommerce brands, um, hospitals, things like that. So I would imagine you might have, what are the verticals, I guess that you're, you're kind of an association

Tim Pringle: 04:47 that's based out of Dallas, may have about a thousand members and they're all in the trades, roofers, plumbers and electricians, home services. They're all home service based and they're all relying on Google ad words and they're all reliant on follow recording. So those are, that's the biggest, those are the biggest verticals that we're focusing on, but we're kind of positioning the company so that we can actually offer our services to anybody.

Ryan Shank: 05:11 That's amazing. So essentially I want to be

Tim Pringle: 05:15 the Godaddy of online advertising. That's my vision for the business.

Ryan Shank: 05:21 I love it. I absolutely love it. So, so these guys, do you know what percentage of their leads, I guess you would say our phones. I mean, is it like, is it like 50 percent or phone calls? So they have to get some web forums, right? Or.

Tim Pringle: 05:34 Yeah, they do get web forms as well, but I would say the majority we optimize the campaigns to be strictly click to call. Yep. So when you optimize a mobile campaign that way, as you know, then the majority of the leads will be phone calls. But of course we can do, we can do extensions that we can do it so that they click on the headline and that goes right to the website. But I think these trades, they're looking for people that need answers immediately.

Ryan Shank: 05:57 One hundred percent. You know, I've actually been working with these guys. I'm getting old now for like almost 10 years, which is kind of crazy. But what I'm finding is they're going out into the field, like, you know, sometimes there's just mom and pop shop, right? They have the, they don't, you know, if they get a web lead as we call it a, you know, marketers, they might not get, get to it so later. Right. But like they're always answering the phone, you know. So, um, it's interesting that you say, you know, a lot of these home services and the trades because that's what we're hearing as well in terms of like that's what they want. They want the phone calls. Um, I'm curious, are you finding anything you know with like missed calls and what can you do as an agency owner, you know, to maybe help or educate a.

Tim Pringle: 06:42 Then what we do is we do a weekly report for our clients. We actually do a spot check two or three calls, usually two calls, one bad call short, and then we do a little weekly summary of the impressions, the clicks, some action on the account and we include, we attached those three recordings and we kind of give them a little guidance saying, hey, you know, this call could have been handled better or these calls were great. These are hired potential revenue, uh, calls that came in and then the least the owner of the business knows that we're on top of the case and that. And then he gets a little snapshot of what's going on with his ad words every week.

Ryan Shank: 07:15 Did you, I'm assuming you didn't always do that, like did you run into something where, you know, like when did you realize you needed to do that? Um, I've heard that was a,

Tim Pringle: 07:25 that was a nugget from my partner who worked at Google idea, but we were doing monthly reports, analytic reports before that and just sending them to the client. But uh, and of course they get the call notifications as they come in, but we found it was beneficial that they know that we're kind of managing and monitoring their campaigns as we go so then they can listen to one or two calls and they kind of have an idea what's going on on a weekly basis. We find that there's a lot of value in that

Ryan Shank: 07:51 and I got to imagine, you know, that helps with retention in potentially even, you know, it helps you show them that you're being a partner in their business versus, Hey, I'm just just here managing yet. You're like, no, I'm proactive. I'm listening to the calls of coaching. You ultimately can help get them a higher return on their ad spend. Right,

Tim Pringle: 08:10 exactly. Well, they want to know that it's not just set it and forget it, right. They want to know that it's being someone's actually taking care of it and taking care in it and looking after it for them on their behalf.

Ryan Shank: 08:21 Got It. So this isn't cheap. It's not. Especially if by the way some of these industries like, like personal injury lawyer, dentist, I mean these are like 50, 60, $70 clicks, you know, by the time you get to. And maybe maybe here, maybe you can talk about that. Do you, can you, do you have any ballpark costs per lead calls? I don't know if that's proprietary and it's all,

Tim Pringle: 08:41 it's all depending. Like you said, it's like a lawyer could be, it could be like $100 a click and a taxicab could be a dollar a click. So it really basis purely based on industry and how competitive that industry is on.

Ryan Shank: 08:55 So are you. So when you report to them, are you tracking it past the call? Like, are you going into appointment booked or even sale and trying to like do any closed loop or you kind of see you're managing it to the, to the leader, to the call as you would 100 percent. Got It. Got It. And uh, so, so what are these, what does everyone asking for is, you know, do they just want more volume? Do they want, you know, bigger jobs. I mean everyone wants bigger jobs. I'm just curious like what was the feedback from the actual customers? Um, you know, what's important to each customer and each

Tim Pringle: 09:33 presents itself with its own set of challenges for customers that never called and never asked us anything. They're happy with what they're getting.

Ryan Shank: 09:39 And we have customers that are really. Yeah, those are the dream clients and they're early, they're like

Tim Pringle: 09:45 horns. They're hard to find, but when you find one, you really appreciate them. That's for sure.

Ryan Shank: 09:50 Yeah, it's crazy to me. Some industries too, it's like you'll get one conversion, like I was talking with someone, one of their clients is like a plastic surgeon and plastic. It's like medical, but it's all out of pocket. So there's no insurance because a lot of times if you have a, an industry, you've got to get the right insurance, it's hard to get the right lead type because people are doing just generic searches. But anyway, plastic surgery, it's like $10,000 clients all cash. Um, so it's like, you know, you can't and that's why those clicks are so expensive, but yeah,

Tim Pringle: 10:19 and that's where my partner comes in and we do things like we really focus on negative keywords, quality score. Those are the key metrics that we're looking at in order to try and give the most value for the, for the client as possible and get them the most qualified curated leads as possible as well.

Ryan Shank: 10:34 Got It. So talk, talk to us a little bit about tactically how, how are you going after new business and what is your own process look like? Like you get a prospect you think is good for, for you. Do you set up a meeting with us? We do demos and then we try to, you know, we convert our demos into sales. But with you, I imagine similar thing, maybe run through an existing ad words account and you give them a presentation, what does that flow look like?

Tim Pringle: 10:57 So a lot of times the customer kind of has an idea what we're doing. So we do go through a powerpoint presentation with them and explain the product knowledge to them. We also have a questionnaire I really a google doc that we sent out to the clients and they fill out all the questions that are curated to help us get the account up and running and pointed in the right direction. Okay. And then of course we go through the building and onboarding process and then once we turn it on it's a go and then we manage it on a weekly, monthly basis.

Ryan Shank: 11:28 Talk to me about the relationship then with your clients. Is it, is it a setup fee? Do you have retainers? Is it percentage of ad spend? Is there tears? Like it's

Tim Pringle: 11:41 basically it's based on the customer's budget obviously, and we have a few different ways. So we do charge a creation fee, a one time fee to set everything up and get it all going and we quote about two weeks to get that done no matter what they're doing because there's a fair amount of work and setting it all up and getting it absolutely, there's a lot of people that have to touch that project in order to get it optimized to where it needs to be turned on. And then we have plans where we charge one price and we build in the ad spend and the management fee into that. And then of course for bigger clients we can just go with a straight percentage of ad spend against their budget as a management fee.

Ryan Shank: 12:17 Got It. So those smaller clients, it's based on is it based on scope of work? A little bit. So it's know you include the ad spend or you don't include the ad spend and then

Tim Pringle: 12:26 that's based on size of client and size of account basically. So if it's a real huge account then they're obviously going to be pretty uh, pretty tuned. What,

Ryan Shank: 12:36 like 10K , 20 K ad spend 10 k plus a month. 10 K

Tim Pringle: 12:43 were, were, were, were, were working with some clients that's been north of 25 k a month.

Ryan Shank: 12:47 Interesting. What's the average client spending in our management fees or anything? Yeah, one to 5,000 a month. I'd say one to 5,000. And then do you have a, do you have a minimum? Like what if someone wants to ask? So

Tim Pringle: 13:01 does that minimum of a thousand? A thousand a month. Okay. Got It. Anything lower than that is really small. Smaller campaigns.

Ryan Shank: 13:12 Yup. Interesting. Um, alright. Awesome. This has been, this has been super great. A couple of questions just to close it out. First is what is your morning routine look like?

Tim Pringle: 13:22 So I get up every morning at about 6:00 AM, set the alarm for 6:00 AM, get up, have a cup of coffee and hang out with my wife because we get up together. Awesome. And it depends on the day because of a, as you know in our business we have the flexibility to work from home. So for instance, this morning I work from home until my first meeting was in the afternoon and sometimes I come when I meet my team, I'd come in and straighten the morning at 8:00. Usually we have breakfast around 7:30. I usually bring breakfast for the team and then we got crack in at eight and a few days. Mcdonald's. Okay. Mickey D's.

Ryan Shank: 13:56 Love it. Nice and healthy. Um, second question, if you were to break in for someone, you know, I would imagine there's a lot of people listening or watching that want to get started in the marketing world. They want to get some clients maybe break out from their day job, their nine to five, maybe they want to break away from a larger agency and start their own agency. What would you, what would you say to them to get started? How do you get your first client?

Tim Pringle: 14:25 Go to a lot of networking events. Networking, meet people, shake hands and kiss babies. No business cards. Like, just get out there and get your name out there and have a bit of personality like you because I think that's how you learn a lot of your clients is you've got some Chutzpah, got some personality and you know, you're not afraid to put it out there and take some risks.

Ryan Shank: 14:46 Love it. Awesome. And lastly, how do we find you? How does, how do we, you, what's your website where your website is? [inaudible] dot com and that's Kinda why I like the name five, zero five zero, zero free calls. Not Bomb. It's easy to. It's easy to remember. It's easy spell. It's short enough you, we'll have the link in the description in the show notes as well, and my email and they can email me right from the website. Okay. And uh, you know, we have all the social media is going so you can reach out that way as well. Love it. Awesome. Tim, really appreciate you joining us guys. This is the third episode. Tim. Sprinkle 50 free calls.com. Absolutely crushing it. I'm thank you tim for being with us. This is episode three of growing your agency. Thank you so much, Ryan. Talk to you soon. Yep.