At the end of the day, people tend to be guided by their feelings. Especially in the business world, you can't neglect your numbers, because otherwise your decisions will be distorted, which will cost you a lot of time and money.
Lucas Wagner laid the foundation for his profession as a sales & business consultant in his childhood bedroom.
At just 15 years of age, he was able to participate in one of the finest personnel consultancies for sales professionals in Germany. Projects with large German financial services companies and banks quickly turned into his own management consultancy. Nowadays, 6 years later, Lucas Wagner helps service providers, consultants, and coaches to scale their businesses. The focus of Wagner & Metz Consulting is thereby still on sales, human resources, and marketing.
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Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Lucas Wagner: More or less the coincidence! I realized very quickly during school that the normal career path is not attractive for me. I appreciate thinking freely and finding creative solutions. This contradicts the ideas of most employers. Since we have school attendance laws here in Germany, I decided to make good use of the time until I graduated from high school and applied for an internship at a consulting firm. I managed to convince the managing partner until today I am not sure if despite or especially because of my young age. The learning curves in management consultancies, and particularly in the smaller ones, are very steep.
After my internship, I was offered the opportunity to continue working on projects part-time, which I did in addition to my school. The foundation was laid, in the morning I went to school, and in the afternoon I went to the office to coordinate projects with big corporations and to have meetings with managers. It was a very exciting but also a challenging time for me because due to my young age I was generally looked at rather critically. You have to earn your respect in your younger years. After gaining some years of experience I decided to start my own consulting company with a good friend and colleague. With Wagner & Metz Consulting we help service providers, consultants and coaches worldwide to optimize their marketing and sales and thus enable scaling.
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Lucas Wagner: As just mentioned, today I stand only because of the decision of the partner. The managing partner saw potential in me, many months and joint projects later he revealed to me that he recognized himself in youth. I went through a hard school under him because he demanded and expected more, way more from me than from the other associates. The demands were great but the opportunity even greater, I can’t remember anywhere learning so much and growing that much as a person. After a few months, I was entrusted with project responsibility for important clients, such as one of the largest banks in Germany.
What are the most common mistakes you see entrepreneurs make and what would you suggest they do?
Lucas Wagner: Never give up, always keep going.
I know that’s a rather unusual statement, and I also know that I’m directly contradicting great entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs. We observe the following very often: Many aspiring coaches act as if they could compensate for a bad offer or a bad market by increasing their number of hits. This is not the case!
We as entrepreneurs should be very strict about choosing a market that is growing at least as fast as the overall economy and solving real problems in that market. It is not enough to come around the corner with the next “nice-to-have” offer. To make a dent in the universe, problems need to be solved. The bigger and the more painful the problems are, the better. If everything fits – The Target Group, The Market, The Offer & The Skills of the Salesperson (or Entrepreneur) it is not unrealistic to realize closing ratios above 60%.
Unfortunately, a lot of entrepreneurs are in love with their offer. I can only advise everyone to think about a pivot early, whenever significant numbers (at least 30 sales calls) can be collected it is time to refine the offer. Of course, some exceptions prove the rule, like a KFC, but why take the painful path that ends in a dead-end in 99 out of 100 cases?
Has the pandemic and transitioning into mostly online shopping affected your company positively or negatively?
Lucas Wagner: As we share our expertise with service providers, consultants, and coaches, we have been able to benefit greatly. With or without Corona – it is overdue that many service providers and experts digitize themselves. We see Corona as a superficial wake-up call and are also happy to help make offline offerings suitable for the online world.
In your opinion, what makes your company stand out from the competition?
Lucas Wagner: We are stubborn and obsessive about the success of our customers. Almost fanatically, we do everything necessary to cross the finish line with our partners. I don’t know anyone in my market who is willing to do something similar.
Add to that our experience. I bring years of experience from one of the best management consultancies in the region. In the area of sales, human resources & marketing, we have access to resources that otherwise only DAX corporations and similarly sized companies have.
My co-founder previously worked with the largest performance marketing agency in Germany! Nobody knows the coaching market better than him. This combination of hunger for success and experience has no rival – neither nationally nor globally.
Delegating is part of being a great leader, but what have you found helpful to get your managers to become valiant leaders as well?
Lucas Wagner: I believe strongly in boiling down success.
What do I mean by that specifically? Everything, regardless of whether it is leading people, delivering a service, selling a product, or setting up campaigns, is subject to processes. Often these processes are subconscious, they are there, similar to the chaos theory patterns are present but they are not perceived.
The best tool to teach other people my approach was to slip into the observer role for some time. Take 2 weeks and observe exactly what you do and how you do it when you work. Start to break down your procedures into checklists. Even studied surgeons and pilots work with checklists – and achieve much better results!
Use your finished checklist and review the content. Act strictly according to the instructions on the initial version of your checklist. Do you notice that something is missing? Very good! Improve your checklist at these points. Repeat until you have a watertight and easy-to-follow process. At this point, you have everything you need to trust what you do to other people. It’s no longer specifically about technical expertise but more about human suitability. Once you have found a suitable employee, you start to train them on your checklists and processes until you see them successfully implementing them on their own.
Being a CEO of the company, do you think that your personal brand reflects your company’s values?
Lucas Wagner: Especially when it comes to very spicy services such as management consulting or agency services, it must be clear that the value of one’s consulting depends on the name. We at Wagner & Metz Consulting live growth, growth for our partners, growth for us, and growth for our environment. We firmly believe that speed of action always beats perfectionism.
We firmly believe that customer success obsession is the fastest and only way for our clients to get top results. I was a person identify 100% with these core values, as do my employees. If this were not the case, authentic action would not be possible at all. Without authenticity, there is no trust and without trust, there is no success for our clients.
You will quickly notice that the core values of the company are very closely interwoven with the people, the company itself, and the goal. They are not separable!
How would you define “leadership”?
Lucas Wagner: For me, leadership is inseparable from leading. I think the classic idea of a hierarchical pyramid with a broad base and a CEO at the top is wrong in my eyes. The pyramid should be rotated 180 degrees. My task is not only to exemplify our values and intervene when they are violated but also to provide my employees with everything they need for their development. We are a very fast-growing consultancy and our employees need to grow with us, that is my main task – to ensure culture and growth for all.
Apart from that, I think that leadership should always be by example. No one in our offices works more than the partners.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Lucas Wagner: I am able to answer this question first hand. Start! Find a market, solve a problem & then start selling. Look at your numbers and tweak your offer, your strategy and go back out to repeat this process until you have tweaked your offer and performance so well that you can no longer be ignored. It is easier than you think, at the end of the day you are often your own biggest opponent. Therefore, go for it instead of waiting for the perfect moment.
What’s your favorite “business” quote and how has it affected your business decisions?
Lucas Wagner: I think with each level a different quote is very important. On the whole, I opt for “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” by Peter Drucker.
At the end of the day, people tend to be guided by their feelings. Especially in the business world, you can’t neglect your numbers, because otherwise your decisions will be distorted, which will cost you a lot of time and money.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Lucas Wagner for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Lucas Wagner or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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