Chris Simmance:
Thanks, VoiceOver Guy. Thank you very much. And on this podcast today, I’m really pleased to have one of our agency advisors, Alpa, with us today. How are you doing?
Alpa Shingadia:
Very well, thank you for having me, Chris.
Chris Simmance:
You’re very welcome for coming on to be honest. I’m nervous about how this one’s going to go. Not because you are bad at what you do, not because I’m bad at what I do, but because when we get talking, we keep talking and we laugh more than we talk. So hopefully we get through this. We’ll do our best, won’t we, Alper?
Alpa Shingadia:
We’re going to give it our best, Chris, I promise. It’s serious today, you know, serious,
Chris Simmance:
Best ever.
Alpa Shingadia:
mate.
Chris Simmance:
Is it serious?
Alpa Shingadia:
We’ll…
Chris Simmance:
Right, on, done. Serious face. Everyone, this is gonna be really boring now.
Alpa Shingadia:
..
Chris Simmance:
So first and foremost, Alper, give us a little bit of a mini sort of CV. Who are you? What is it that you do? Where have you come from? What’s your backstory, mate?
Alpa Shingadia:
Right, well my backstory first was I’m a political refugee. So that’s quite an interesting one. So my father was the equivalent of Richard Branson in Nairobi, in Kenya. And when Idi Amin in the 70s started to kick out the Asians, President Kenyatta’s first cousin decided he was going to go after my father’s business. So hired contract killers, assassins. Anyway, the long and short of it is after a lot of time, I was six months old after period of difficulty, we negotiated, or my dad’s lawyer negotiated his safety and get the assassins called off and from there he gave them the business, which was worth millions, and then the Kenyan government revoked our citizenship. So we were…
Chris Simmance:
I mean, agency stuff, how the hell does that factor into that? Bloody hell.
Alpa Shingadia:
Well that’s my
Chris Simmance:
This
Alpa Shingadia:
background.
Chris Simmance:
is where your entrepreneurial side comes in, right?
Alpa Shingadia:
Definitely. What’s really interesting is being an Asian girl growing up in the 80s with a very traditional family. I was never meant to be the entrepreneurial one. It was my two elder brothers who were supposed
Chris Simmance:
I see.
Alpa Shingadia:
to be the entrepreneurial one. But it turns out that all of that killer instinct that my dad had to grow a massive business, he passed on to me. and not my two brothers, which is really weird because they had the better education, the better opportunities, the better everything. I was a girl, so I was groomed for marriage and to be someone’s wife. So that killer instinct was never killed off. And I think if you’re entrepreneurial, you will always find a way regardless
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
of what paths are in front of you. And I think you’ve got to find that instinct from somewhere sometimes. and that’s something that I was lucky enough to have, maybe.
Chris Simmance:
And fast forwarding somewhat into your actual entrepreneurial career, into your actual work life, what history have you got? I know that you literally ran an agency, so what’s the story there? What was the agency all about?
Alpa Shingadia:
Okay, so before I started the agency, I was very senior in marketing, particularly I became a marketing director. I’ve worked across big enterprise technology companies. Then when the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, there was a mass exodus of everyone, of which I was one of those casualties. And my husband and I were thinking of starting a family. So I started an agency very much by accident. not for the reasons a lot of people start an agency. For me, it was so I could keep my income and start a family and, you know, and that was really the main reason. So I knew nothing about business. I knew nothing about how to develop anything, but I knew that if I vote to people, I’d get some clients. So basically, I’ve got The Yellow Pages, which is a thick book for those who are too young to know
Chris Simmance:
FFFF
Alpa Shingadia:
what that is. It’s a very thick telephone directory. And I opened it up. Top got the phone, which wasn’t a mobile phone. It was a normal sort of, you know, connected to the wall phone. And I started at A in software and I rang down. I got five clients out of that quite by accident
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
and the agency was born.
Chris Simmance:
Brilliant. And what nowadays as an advisor to agencies, what’s your kind of key specialisms? Where do you fit best?
Alpa Shingadia:
I fit best with business development and generating leads and conversions.
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
A lot of agencies are brilliant at getting in the leads, whether they’re using HubSpot or any type of inbound lead generation platform, or just generally really great at attracting those people through great marketing, but where they don’t often join the dots is you’ve got the lead, but you now need to convert that lead. You know, it’s, you’ve got somebody to the door. you need to get them to come in and have a cup of tea with you. And that’s the bit where I think agencies often don’t get that right.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
And that’s an area where you’ve done all this work, you’ve spent all this money to get that lead through the door, but the conversion is just not good enough. Why isn’t it good enough? So that’s kind of where I come in and ask those difficult questions and put things in place. Cause agency owners naturally aren’t always sales people. and you have to have a little bit of a sales edge here, particularly in the closing. I think that’s the thing I mean, you know,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
closing the deal, asking for the money, asking for the contract.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, and you’re not wrong. I agree, I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it, I’ve done it. And lots of agency leaders, they’ll start an agency because they’re very good at running the deliverables and they know what they’re doing there and they learn to run the business as they grow. Growth with a strategy helps you accelerate that growth,
Alpa Shingadia:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Simmance:
but you can only really accelerate the growth of an agency by having a decent and quick sales closing approach, that sales close also needs to not be too salesy so that then not just the conversion being high, but you also keep the client. They don’t feel like they’ve been sold to in a sense.
Alpa Shingadia:
Definitely. No, I agree. I think the key thing I did when I ran my marketing agency and as we grew, uh, and I was predominantly the sales head. So
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
I brought in the clients and I was referred to as one night stand Alpa, which I will explain what that means. It means I would see a client. I’d see a prospect and it was three touches. That was, that was, that was the objective. One would be a cold call or some kind of a lead gen exercise. Number two would be to get in front of the client. Number three is to, at that point, close.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
And number four was to then do the kickoff and hand them over to somebody who was better at marketing than me, okay?
Chris Simmance:
Right.
Alpa Shingadia:
So that was a member of my team. So once I’d done that final bit, the client said to me, I could see you wanting to run out the door faster than anything. I felt abused, you know, I’d seen you for a few times and then you disappeared and then this new person was meant to look after me and I only ever saw you at Christmas you know, decided that you were going to buy me Christmas lunch or something. But that, that is where I think it’s separating. Sometimes you, you sometimes might need a good sales person
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
to do that initial bit because they can then focus just on that, because if you are closing the sale and then trying to deliver on that work, it can be quite tricky. Now I understand what everyone can, can do that. And that’s where you get the feast and famine.
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
Um, situation. So if when you are of a certain size, you can get a business development person in who understands marketing at a high enough level to be able to sell the services, let them do that bit. And then when the client comes in, you actually do the fun bit. And that’s kind of where I got my agency. But you know, it, I understand it’s, it’s tough, you know, if you’re small to do that. So, you know, you, it’s just finding that balance.
Chris Simmance:
Absolutely.
Alpa Shingadia:
That was a bit rude, I was mid-flow!
Chris Simmance:
Bit rude. Interrupting you in mid flow there, bloody hell. So crikey. So Halper, what is it that you love most about working with agencies?
Alpa Shingadia:
I love the energy and I love the dynamism of them. You know, there’s a buzz, yeah? And I love that buzz because, and it’s also a much younger crew, so that makes me feel young as well. So those, but that’s a personal thing. The actual, the fun bit is the buzz and going in and seeing these creatives come up with all sorts of things. You think, where did that come from? And I mean, I mean, or constantly of some of the creativity. And I’m just like, I’ve never thought of that in a million years.
Chris Simmance:
Listen.
Alpa Shingadia:
So how they think it’s not the same as most folk.
Chris Simmance:
No, it’s like in all industries, anyone who’s like starting out, they wanna do it slightly differently to what they’ve seen and usually they start out because they feel they can do it better or whatever else. But like the agency industry, the marketing agency industry or the digital agency industry, like… there has to be this kind of innovative dynamism, like you say, in order for you to sort of stand out. If you’re constantly looking for a new way of doing something or a better way of doing something, then you make a lot of mistakes, but you create a lot of cool stuff. And like… Just thinking from a perspective of marketing an agency, the amount of different ways I’ve seen people doing these things, and there’s everything ranging from screaming and shouting about yourself and your successes through to literally showing those successes and bits in between. But some of these guys, they’ve got a real Branson-esque style. Do you remember the thing where he drove a tank over a load of Coca-Cola’s to launch his Coca-Cola brand? That was weird, but it kind of worked until, you know, the drink didn’t sell, but it kind of worked. It was like that. You see a lot of this kind of random, random thoughts that turn into really cool executions.
Alpa Shingadia:
No, definitely. And I think the other thing is there’s a lot of retro stuff that I’m seeing coming, coming back in. So when I was running a sort of, you know, doing some of the sales lead gen type stuff. So the thing is we live in the digital world. So sometimes if an agency can do something retro style. So what I mean is like a 3d mailer. So someone sent me a letter in the post and they’d stuck a wriggly spearmint gum, you know, the stick of gum on it. And the fact that I’m talking to you about this letter that I got 18 months ago,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
right, shows you that there’s, it isn’t just about being innovative, I think, in the digital. Go back, look at how it was done in the 80s, in the 70s, because there’s things there that are forgotten, but actually when you bring them back in, they bring a smile on someone’s face, and that is half the battle, I think, of getting somebody to read something. And then when you
Chris Simmance:
Mmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
follow that up with a phone call… think the fun the person had on phoning because I sent her a stick of Wrigley’s gum. The receptionist does not know what to do with that and
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Alpa Shingadia:
the chance is well you’ll be put through
Chris Simmance:
so it immediately
Alpa Shingadia:
and the person
Chris Simmance:
gets
Alpa Shingadia:
on
Chris Simmance:
escalated
Alpa Shingadia:
the other end will…
Chris Simmance:
up doesn’t it?
Alpa Shingadia:
yeah
Chris Simmance:
Um, Josh,
Alpa Shingadia:
and
Chris Simmance:
what
Alpa Shingadia:
they
Chris Simmance:
do I
Alpa Shingadia:
take
Chris Simmance:
do
Alpa Shingadia:
the
Chris Simmance:
with
Alpa Shingadia:
call
Chris Simmance:
this?
Alpa Shingadia:
and they have it and it then ceases to be a sales call because you’re actually joking. I can’t believe you sent me that. I haven’t seen one of those in years or whatever the words might be and that’s where I love the innovation. It’s not always about being expensive it’s about maybe… sometimes going back to forgotten techniques as well.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, that’s cool. Yeah, not wrong. I saw one a long time ago with like, they stuck the wrappers to different chocolate bars on something so like kind of pun level spelt a sentence out for someone.
Alpa Shingadia:
Mm.
Chris Simmance:
That’s quite good. Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like that you don’t have to do the cold email or the cold call. I’ve just thought of a really good idea of the back of that I’m going to save in the bank.
Alpa Shingadia:
I’m going to go ahead and turn it off.
Chris Simmance:
them in the post from me, the idea came from here.
Alpa Shingadia:
Hahaha
Chris Simmance:
What do you think is in your experience like something that distinguishes the best from the rest in the agency space?
Alpa Shingadia:
That’s a really interesting question. So I was one of my contracts and I had the privilege of working in this very large London agency. So it was one of my early contracts when I started my own agency and I was
Chris Simmance:
Yes.
Alpa Shingadia:
trying to figure out where I fitted into. I just took the work because it was paying. And it was in a digital agency that specialised in fintech. And one of the things that I loved about it was the owner. I won’t mention her name. She’s very well known in the marketing industry. But I learned a lot from her. And there were teams of people. There was over 150 people working in this London agency.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
But she was one of the things she did as the owner. She knew everyone’s name. And as she walked in, she stopped and spoke to as many people as she could between where she was going and to her desk. So she was always accessible. That was really good. And the other thing I think. what makes it successful or where I’ve worked is that no idea was poopooed. Everything was really, you know, so if someone from the reception team said, I’ve got an idea
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
on how we can promote this. It wasn’t like, well, you just answer the phone. I mean, I’m talking years ago now, we don’t have reception. So giving you an idea of my age, but back then it was like, well, anyone had an idea and it was given enough airtime.
Chris Simmance:
Yep.
Alpa Shingadia:
to actually put it into the thing. Cause sometimes it’s the odd ideas that you have when you’re on the tube, that someone who’s not in that department and they often think, well, I won’t mention it because, so I would encourage any agency, use everybody, even your juniors, even the ones that,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
you know, the interns, because often they have different ways of looking at something, which helps you see the wood from the tree. So I think it’s not being scared to try new ideas. That’s
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
what- And that’s what this lady showed me. Her door was always open, you know, there were 150 people working there. You could knock on her door and say, I’ve got this idea on how I think we could do this. And she would say, yeah, go for it. Go and explore it. Come back if you, you know, try it out, see what the results are. And I think that allows your talent to develop.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
And I think that’s the key thing. It’s not, I don’t think marketing can be… one set way. I think the successful agencies are the ones which embrace everything and nothing is, you know, nothing is impossible kind
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Alpa Shingadia:
of thing.
Chris Simmance:
and that kind of, you have to foster that from an early stage, you know, from the values and the purpose that the agency has through to like this building over time of what you’d end up calling a culture. And it’s by, it’s no… ways it easy. It’s a tough thing to do because culture you can’t instill, it builds over time. But a culture of curiosity, a culture where perspectives are heard and understood are massively key. If you’ve got a business where everyone understands that no idea is of non-serious means. But if you’ve got a bunch of people who are not in a department, they will have another perspective. If you’ve got someone who works on the reception desk of your own office, they will have perspectives because they listen to clients that call. They have understanding that you do not. whether it be from the client’s perspective or whether it be from their own perspective of dealing with clients and providers and service providers and all that sort of stuff. And any kind of idea that someone can come up with, they should always feel like, you know, it’s an opportunity to be heard. And if people are heard and they feel heard and they feel looked after, they don’t often leave.
Alpa Shingadia:
Exactly, exactly. In my agency, we used to break bread. I know a lot of agencies still do this and I’m, I love it. So, you know, maybe the last Friday of the month would be pizza and beer day.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
You know, if you think about the cost of that to an agency, it’s nominal. But what it does is it creates that we care about you. And I used to use the pizza and beer days and everyone used to look forward to it. And there’d be a joke like, you know, this week, you need to be good because we’re pig out on pizza and beer. And there was that general, everyone looked forward to it, but what was really good was that it was at that point, and we wasn’t really structured, but we asked around the room, who’s seen some clever marketing? What could we have done better? We never ever asked what went wrong. That’s another thing. What can we do better?
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
And that really changes the positive thinking and the narrative, I think. Yeah, mistakes are gonna happen. And yes, you do need to learn from them. I’d rather learn from a mistake and do something and learn than never try it at all.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
So that’s the way our ethos was, no idea is a bad idea, exactly as you said, and let’s give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen? I mean, obviously, you know, there are things that can go wrong, but I’m not talking…
Chris Simmance:
Maybe balance risk.
Alpa Shingadia:
Yeah,
Chris Simmance:
You balance
Alpa Shingadia:
it’s a balanced
Chris Simmance:
risk,
Alpa Shingadia:
risk.
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
I mean, you’re not going to suddenly go out of business because, you know… Unless you’ve made a racist slur or something which is really bad, but we wouldn’t allow that out the door anyway or anything.
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
But you know, you’ve got to try things.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Alpa Shingadia:
You know,
Chris Simmance:
absolutely.
Alpa Shingadia:
and that’s where the pizza and beer day used to really help. You know, people would just open up and it was really relaxed. So
Chris Simmance:
Sit.
Alpa Shingadia:
people could say what they really wanted.
Chris Simmance:
there. So it’s been a few years since you ran that agency, so that means you’ve saved loads of money on pizza and beer. You haven’t spent any money on that for a long while. You’ve used that money to invest in a magic wand production company and they’ve produced their prototype. It’s only got one shot there, so you can then use that magic wand once. What one thing would you use that magic wand to change about agencies?
Alpa Shingadia:
Oh now that’s an interesting question. My magic wand would be to improve on their conversions. I think
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
that’s it.
Chris Simmance:
And so solve the agency’s conversion problem.
Alpa Shingadia:
Okay, I’d offer trials. I was a firm believer in trials. When you meet a new client, they’re not sure of you. They might have liked what you’ve seen. They might even like you. But there’s always that fear because marketing seems to be this dark arts. Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
And what if I spend this money and I don’t get any results? That’s what
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
the client is thinking, right? Nine times out of 10. So what to make, I always say, make the sale easy, make it easy for them to buy. So one of the things I used to offer is a trial. And I still use it, it works, because it yields conversion. So I will say to the client, let’s work for three months together. That’s it. If at the end of the three months, it’s not working for either of us, we just walk, we’re partners, friends, and there’s no hard feelings. It gives everyone within the team and the client a chance to understand each other, because more often than not, getting information out of the client is where… the bottleneck can be, you know, you need that, you need certain bits from their team and it’s not forthcoming. So that three months gives you an idea of how insane or sane that client is going to be to work with.
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Alpa Shingadia:
And then at that point, you make a decision. If you know the writing’s on the wall and you’ll know within six to eight weeks of working with that client, that this client is going to be impossible to work for long term, you then
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Alpa Shingadia:
have that choice. And I think that’s the other bit of the question. So don’t
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
be scared to walk away from a client because sometimes the amount of time they take and suck out of your team can be better invested elsewhere. And that’s a very scary thing to say, but it’s something when I ran my agency, we did, we had no qualms about stopping working with a client if we felt it wasn’t going anywhere. Because ultimately it was going to end in a bad divorce six months down the road.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
And it’s my agency’s name at that time. That would have been bad mouth. I’d much rather. pull the plaster off now, no matter how painful it might be financially, because in the longer term those right clients will stay and they’ll stick.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, so in lieu of a magic wand for your agency, try where you can, things like trials or at the very least some kind of. de-risking factor for a potential client on both sides. I think that’s probably a nice thing to end the podcast on there because
Alpa Shingadia:
Definitely.
Chris Simmance:
I think it’s quite an important thing to take away that, you know, either trials, depending on the service trials or a guarantee factor or a something which allows the client to de-risk themselves is, is quite, quite important. And thanks so much for coming on the podcast, Alpa. It’s been lovely talking to you. I’m glad that we actually, you know, we laughed a bit. but not as much as we have done in the past, which I think is probably a good thing for everyone who’s listening.
Alpa Shingadia:
Yeah, I believe Chris when he says that, you know, we would have gone off on all sorts of tangents. I think we’ve
Chris Simmance:
Too
Alpa Shingadia:
been
Chris Simmance:
many
Alpa Shingadia:
very
Chris Simmance:
tangents,
Alpa Shingadia:
good. I think
Chris Simmance:
too many tangents.
Alpa Shingadia:
what we have to do, Chris, is go for a beer later and actually rectify that, because
Chris Simmance:
Yes,
Alpa Shingadia:
I’m quite
Chris Simmance:
yeah,
Alpa Shingadia:
uncomfortable.
Chris Simmance:
yeah. I mean,
Alpa Shingadia:
I’m quite uncomfortable
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Alpa Shingadia:
with being this professional with you. It just feels wrong.
Chris Simmance:
We’ll rectify that. Thank you very much. And in our next episode, we’ll have another agency advisor or partner to talk about what they think about you.