Drew D'Agostino

SYSTEM CONVERSIONS CAN BURN YOUR HOUSE The ACA Convention will soon showcase every major collection software vendor. And if you are looking for a change, there will me many who will tell you horror stories about system conversions. How do you get burned by a conversion? If you are the average agency, did the entire implementation take longer than 3 months? Were there broken promises and long delays? Did your key processes work on Day 1, and did you have a productive day for your agents, payment processes, and loading new business for your major clients? We must admit that "this is not your father's business". Data and process conversions require much more than clever programmers, and demand extremely high levels of practical industry knowledge that software companies do not have. It's the reason Quantrax has several application specialists who have owned or held senior positions in collection operations. And it's the reason our recent conversions took less than three months. If you want to talk about AI and a conversion that won't burn you, contact Mark M Namba at [email protected] Quantrax Corporation (301) 657-2084 .

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$9.37 for a high-ticket B2B lead…   …that's what we were paying on Monday for outsourced software development leads…   They've been averaging about $13 per lead over the last week.   And these aren't leads "scraped" off the internet.   These are folks that voluntarily gave their name and email address.   Facebook is the cheapest place I know to get high-ticket B2B leads…   …but it only happens when your ads are in the context of the intent of the platform.   Facebook is a platform where people go to read stories about people.   So, our ads tell stories about people…   And the pictures aren't polished or produced…   They look like a picture someone took with their iPhone…   Because they are usually a picture someone took with their iPhone   Because that's what normal people on Facebook post.   It doesn't matter where you advertise.   It only matters that… - Your customers are there (and there's over 2 billion people on Facebook) - You meet them in the context of their purpose for being there.   If you needed 20 high-ticket B2B (opt-in) leads by close of business tomorrow…   Where would you go to get them?   How much would you spend?   #leadershipqualities #salesandmarketing #growthstrategies

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Some topline observations and thoughts from VidCon last week. Let me know if these are helpful to your business. 🔥TikTok is acting like they have nothing to fear. Call it bravado, arrogance of scale, a belief DJT wins and sticks with his recent ban reversal (bad bet, he invented it and it’s only taken on bipartisan power since) they are pushing until they can’t. Which - actually - is the best move. For valuation at sale. For longevity if not banned it. Right play. 🔥Sports continue to pivot to view social more like gaming (reach and engagement not revenue). Ian Trombetta and YouTube talked about letting creators create w/ National Football League (NFL) assets. And keep the money. Playbook from what we did together at Activision Blizzard in 2015. Dana White and Slap Fighting Championship (SFC) doing the same. Letting creators livestream from the venues. Very different than Ultimate Fighting Championship rules. 🔥The consumer / professional dual nature of the show means there is now a “secret second VIP VidCon venue where the “people” can’t enter w/o a wristband. Get creator safety. But not sure the consumers who paid to go knew the “hold backs” off the main floor. 🔥Increased diversity across the show ecosystem. Didn’t feel like the OC at all. 🔥AI tools to help creators make better stuff and market it better is coming. Enablement and improvement. Not replacement. Spotter is leading the way here. What big trends did I miss? #vidcon #litrendingtopics #creatoreconomy

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A lot of start-ups fail because they don’t understand product market fit. If you too are on the prenatal stage of figuring your business out, don’t miss this PMF concept. Sarah Jenkins recently interviewed Alex Burke, a product expert from Amazon, Airbnb, and Shopify, who shared insights on PMF’s three pillars: demand, satisfaction, and scalability. Many companies excel at demand and satisfaction—customers love and use their product—but struggle with scalability, ultimately leading to failure. Brands like Juicero and Fab had demand but couldn’t scale and didn’t survive. PMF evolves through four stages: → Stage 1 Your early customers are often personal connections. Red flags here include customers not missing your product if it disappeared or inconsistent core features. The focus is on truly understanding your target market. → Stage 2 At this point, the product should drive growth, not your sales team. A churn rate above 20% or stagnant growth signals trouble. → Stage 3 (solid PMF)  If you have a significant number of customers, strong net revenue retention, and low churn rates, it indicates that your growth is on track. However, if your net revenue retention declines significantly, it may suggest retention issues that could hinder your ability to scale effectively. → Stage 4  If you have a substantial customer base, a strong sales conversion rate, and your earnings exceed your expenses, you’ve likely discovered a solid product-market fit. At every stage, remember the "4P" framework: Persona, Problem, Promise, Product. The key is continuous evolution—PMF is not static, and you need to keep fine-tuning as you scale. Anything you’d add? #ProductMarketFit #StartupSuccess #BusinessGrowth

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Agencies, I've got a win-win-win-win here for you.... We know times are tough, we're all feeling it a bit right now. Fingers crossed after the election things pick up. In previous slowdowns demand for new websites always seems to increase... so here's something to think about if: - You're current paying more than £350 odd a month for your website - You're not getting any decent candidates apply through it - You can't remember the last client lead you had If these things apply to you, let us build you a new website, you'll save money (win), get more candidates (win), and you may even get a lead or two from it (win). Oh and we get to build you a website (win for us) Then when the market picks up and you're busy making placements, you dont have to worry about changing your website which you've been putting off for ages... Winner winner - am I wrong?

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What's the goal for your website visitors? There's always something you want them to do, right? That's exactly why every high-traffic page on your site needs a call to action (CTA) – and I mean every page, including your social media profiles! Now, this doesn't mean you should bombard every page with offers. But your most visited pages – like your homepage, contact page, and testimonials – definitely need a clear CTA. You'll notice a boost in engagement rates when visitors can easily find and do what you want them to. The CTA could vary based on your goals. It might be signing up for a newsletter, checking out a product page, or learning about a sale. These strategically placed calls to action can be a game-changer in converting site traffic into new customers.

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Why Building an Audience is the Best Way to Get Leads 💹 I’ve been selling to website owners and businesses around for a while, yet I see some businessmen (like Hormozi, Cody Sanchez, Matt Gray, etc.) getting 100x done without even moving a needle. Compared to my previous efforts… 😅 So, what do you think all these people have in common - That’s A Growing Audience! Now, when it comes to getting leads... It’s all about reaching as many people as possible, which is why, the "one-to-many" category works the best. In this way, you just create once and can target as many people as possible, thereby reducing your efforts. But, what makes building an audience the best leads strategy for any business: 1. You don’t need to pay a dime to anyone to bring leads. 2. It keeps expanding your warm audience (followers) that you can leverage on. 3. It builds your brand and authority, giving you more closes than ever. 4. It is the most cost-effective way of attracting a growing audience that you can leverage in tons of ways, including selling your products/services. The reason why, I've been doubling down on content and trying to create an impact by building an audinece I can serve with tons of value. PS: Now, what do you think, is there any other ways which can give you such great results?

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Want to know if a dev agency is truly on your side? See if they push back. A lot of agencies just chase billable hours, agreeing to every tech need without question. But the best agencies focus on building something meaningful— products that people love and client partnerships they’re proud of. They don’t just say “yes” to every feature request. They ask tough questions, challenge assumptions, and keep the dialogue going. They want clients to win because successful clients become their best sales reps.

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Give some love to your site's structure. When search engines decide where your site should land in search results, they're not just looking at your content. They also check how easy it is for people to move around your site. Keep your webpages super organized, so visitors can zip through and find exactly what they need without any fuss. And remember, each page should flow logically, from your main pages down to the smaller sub-pages. Nailing this helps big time with user experience and can give your site a nice boost in search rankings. It's all about making things smooth and simple for both your visitors and search engines.

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Is this really helpful? Warmly, is sweet. Don't get me wrong. They consolidate a ton of tools into one. But, was Whole Foods really on my site? No. Account Identification uses a reverse IP lookup to see where someone is from that's on your site. Someone in a Whole Foods in Des Moines was on my site, probably sitting in line at the grocery store. Who the hell cares if Microsoft or even a small business were on your site? It's WHO that matters. Without that, what are you going to do? Blanket the entire company? That's not feasible nor smart. Can we stop trying to use generic tools and start focusing on tools that enable you to hyper-personalize the buyer journey? #marketinganalytics #salesenablement #abm #gtm

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$75,000 Is How Much It Can Cost You to Overlook ADA Compliance Did you know that failing to make your website ADA-compliant could cost your business up to $75,000 for a first violation? I’m sure you’ll agree that fines like this aren't something you want to deal with, especially when they can escalate to $150,000 for repeat offenses. What might surprise you is that service-based businesses generating $5 million to $20 million in annual revenue are being targeted for these lawsuits more than ever before. Companies in sectors like professional services, healthcare, financial services, hospitality, and education are often hit, and you could be next if your website isn't accessible. If your business depends on your website to book services, interact with clients, or share information, non-compliance is a severe risk. Your site may have issues like inaccessible navigation, missing alt text for images, poor color contrast, or unlabeled form fields—and these errors could lead to litigation. I know you’re focused on delivering an outstanding client experience, and an inaccessible website could harm your reputation just as much as your bottom line. On top of that, the legal costs, court time, and potential reputational damage from being sued can set your business back significantly. If you want to avoid this, the best approach is to be proactive about compliance now. By making your website accessible, you'll broaden your reach, improve the user experience for all clients, and show your commitment to inclusivity. I can help you get there—starting with a full assessment of your current website. I’ll review your site, identify any compliance gaps, and provide you with an actionable plan to fix them. Let’s ensure your business is protected before non-compliance becomes a costly problem. Reach out today to schedule your ADA compliance assessment—I’m here to help.

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If I were a SaaS owner, I would post a VSL on my landing page. Why? Because it: 🔹 Grabs Attention 🔹 Addresses Pain Points 🔹 Demonstrates Your Solution 🔹 Inspires Action They say a picture speaks a thousand words, but a video speaks a million. And for SaaS, where features and functionality need to be demonstrated, not just described, the power of video is even greater. ✨ Here’s a thought: If your landing page could increase conversions by explaining your product in a more engaging, digestible way—why wouldn’t you make that shift? Curious how to create an effective VSL? DM me, and let’s discuss how you can start converting more leads through video. 🔥

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Domain Rating is hurting your SaaS big time. If you're a SaaS Founder or Growth Head and you don't live under a rock… You've heard the siren song of Domain Rating (DR) More specifically, that it is the ultimate performance indicator. However, before you hitch your wagon to this misleading metric, it's time for a reality check. Yes - DR is something you should consider when tracking the performance of a link-building strategy. But that’s as far as you should go with it. There are a couple of reasons for that, but the two most important aspects to consider are: ╰┈➤ Domain Rating can be manipulated. (that is why you see PBNs with 70+ DR and 0 Domain Traffic ╰┈➤ It is just one piece of your whole link profile. ╰┈➤ It’s a metric created by Ahrefs, not Google Here is a tip from Ahrefs that a lot of people overlook: "Think of DR as a relative term in the sense that it's dependent on not only the total number of high-DR sites that link to you but also on how many other websites these high-DR sites link to." So if you get backlinks from websites with a low Referring Domains/ Linked Domains ratio, you can increase your DR pretty easily. If that is your north star, you would be quite disappointed when that bomb goes off in your face. At the same time and in most cases, service providers that guarantee a fast and strong increase in DR focus on that entirely and get backlinks from websites that are: → Irrelevant → With zero traffic → With some traffic but zero relevance in incoming traffic → PBN/Link Farms Websites that don’t make sense. And they won't make sense in the eyes of Google This can hurt your SaaS because it can lead to: → Decreases in rankings for your revenue-generating pages → Decreases in rankings of cluster/pillar content pages → Diluting in the quality of your link profile → Decreases in non-paid traffic Now that you know there is a breakdown of what are viable performance indicators when tracking a link-building strategy. ╰┈➤ Your overall link profile increase - how fast are the links being indexed and is it gradual and natural enough? ╰┈➤ The rankings of the pages you have targeted with your anchor strategy. ╰┈➤ The number of indexed keywords for your website and pages (a good strategy would result in a significant increase on that front) ╰┈➤ The relevancy and state of both the domain and page from where you get a link (nothing can be industry-targeted links that make sense) ╰┈➤ The link profile of the domains from which you get a backlink. (where does the traffic come from, and from how many pages) ╰┈➤ Domain Rating (yes..yes..I included it.) Don't look at one metric. Look at the whole picture. → Relevancy → Quality → Authoritative As with anything in Google if it doesn't make sense it can lead to more bad than good.

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As a Fractional CTO, I often prefer to hire individual contractors instead of agencies. Many of my clients love hiring agencies, but I tend to steer them away from that strategy. These are a few reasons why I avoid agencies: 1. Agencies have an incentive to create lock in and push towards a "feature factory" culture. This way they'll sell more "resources". Making roles more granular helps selling more profiles. Eg: 1PM+2BE+2FE+1QA, when it could be just 2 or 3 senior fullstack engineers. With such segregation of responsibilities, each team member can also be more junior on average, and the non-senior profiles are the ones where agencies make the highest margins. Suddenly, a startup has a team of 10 to 15 people. Big costs, without actually shipping much value. 2. Agencies don't have an incentive to increase code quality standards Clunky QA and deployment processes are an opportunity for them to sell the people who operate those. Why should they push for automated CI/CD? They'd lose business by doing it. Issues in prod mean more bug tickets and regressed tasks. Those are scope increments they'll happily bill for. There's an incentive to accept loosely defined tasks, and not go deep to define all edge cases ahead of development. It hurts the client's business big time, though. 3. Agencies add barriers and bureaucracy It's usually very easy to add new people to the team. But not so easy to downscale when needed. Or to fire that person who's not performing. Contract clauses like minimum tenures and so on can really hinder nimbleness in a small team. For these 3 reasons, I do not engage agencies when the goal is to build a long lasting team that I want to grow under a certain engineering culture. I hire directly instead, whenever possible. There are hordes of senior talent around the world wanting to be hired directly by US/UK/EU companies. I prefer hiring them and inspiring those individuals to form a strong team, instead of using an agency that instills such vices in them. If you own a software development agency and think this is non-sense, please reply below and tell me why I should recommend your agency to my clients. I've worked with great agencies too, those exist, but are a minority.

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Is your business losing multiple 5 figures per month on this common problem? If your site takes over 5 seconds to load, more than 35% of your conversions are vanishing into thin air. This is an annoying, and expensive problem. But for our attorney client, it was a revenue draining nightmare. Their site was dragging at 6 seconds. - Nowhere to be found on the first page. - The few visitors who managed to find the site bounced, sending negative signals to Google. - Fortunately, no visitors meant no negative brand impression. A total conversion killer. We jumped in and found the culprit—a slow site was ruining their chance to convert leads. Our game plan? We overhauled the backend and sliced that load time down to 0.5 seconds. The results? Insane. Their revenue skyrocketed. From $50K to $100K a month, with better-qualified traffic, longer sessions, and a flood of new clients. All because we turbocharged the site speed. Why risk a $50,000 a month hit with quick fixes and cheap plugins when the future of your business depends on it? We all know that slow and ugly websites are an embarrassing issue, but they don’t have to be. My team and I can only take on a few clients at a time, as fixing this is not a band-aid but a real piece of art. Reach out to see if we have open availability for your project.

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We were approached by a $400 million manufacturer. After a paid discovery process with another agency, they were told: “The site build will cost between $500,000 and a million.” The range was vague, with no clear plan on managing those costs. We presented an Excel sheet. It detailed how they could get their site live for closer to $400,000. The focus wasn’t just on the money. It was about efficiency. Getting the site live quickly with minimal investment. Planning for incremental improvements. Here’s my advice: Find a partner who has solved similar challenges before. They should provide a detailed plan to reach your goals quickly and efficiently. They should challenge your assumptions about what needs to be included at go-live and what can come later. Lastly, plan for as much, if not more, investment after go-live. Think long-term. Make incremental improvements to what you build. This approach ensures sustainable growth and efficiency.

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My early-stage portfolio company achieves over 2M annual organic impressions on Google and is continually growing. While their current traffic percentage is not optimal, with most search rankings between positions 5 to 15, improvements in domain authority will lead to significant organic growth. Notably, many startups I review neglect SEO from the start. The first step is simply to begin publishing content. Immediate results may not be evident, but progress is impossible without taking that initial action. Today is a perfect day to get started.

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Good agencies and great agencies are separated by one thing. People. I used to think it was process too. But, I think most agencies have virtually the same process. The difference in good process v bad process are the people executing that process and the quality at which they do it and how much they care. The name of an agency matters virtually zero. The people within the agency matter, a lot. The size of the agency, most of the time, doesn't matter a TON. The quality of the TEAM at that agency, that you are working with, matters. 3 A players will accomplish more (and a higher quality output) than a bigger group of B + C players. All this to say, if you are looking to build a great agency, you must find A players who care about the success of the agency and the clients you serve, almost as much as you do. When you find them -- pay them extremely well. Invest in their success, their happiness, their future. Most of the 'bad' agencies I chat with, don't charge their clients enough, or have a good enough margin, to support a team of A players, and it shows. They have high employee churn. In turn, high client churn. And worse, overall morale is low. Great agencies are made up of A players. Play like a champion, today :)

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Such a timely message! I was just relaying my own experience with distribution (and getting it wrong) earlier today with Ward Christman and HR Tech Advisor! We’d done everything right - we did great discovery, we had a solid team develop our MVP, we launched at an industry conference and won awards! But we missed on distribution: we were selling direct to a market that wasn’t ready for our offering. Conversely, our primary competitor had a superior distribution strategy through partnerships with large service providers. They became the platform powering the largest share of the industry. If you’re a first time founder, don’t make the same mistake! Oh, and now I help organizations avoid these pitfalls (and more) at Insignia Innovations, so get in touch or schedule some time with me (using the link on my profile). #StartUps #HRTech #Founders

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