Welcome back - here is a quick summary of the last two parts of this series:
[Part 1]
- Read the book Traction.
- Get a great accountant that understands professional services.
- Do the jobs you love and are good at in your agency - delegate the ones you do not like.
[Part 2]
- Meetings are important - don’t skip them just make them super productive.
- Hire a Credit Controller to do the invoicing and chase payments.
- Create an organisational chart, get the right people in the right seats - and everyone should have a number and a career plan.
Here’s [Part 3]
This is the final part of this blog series but by no means the end of the line. . . We will cover more topics on our blog that combined will help you get to a place where you are in love with your agency again and are excited for the future of your business.
Let’s talk about sales . . . the absolute backbone of your agency. Without sales, there is no business; however, you must sell the right services to the right people in order to have an agency that lasts.
What exactly are you selling?
I am constantly surprised at how few agencies have a price list - even if it’s an internal one, a simple list of what you deliver for your clients, how long it takes, how much it costs to deliver to the client and how much profit your services can give back to your agency.
Create packages and pricing and have them loaded into a proposal software like PandaDoc so that you can get your proposals out to clients quickly and professionally.
Wondering if you've got it right in your agency?:
How do you sell your services?
To be successful in sales, you must have a system in who you approach, how you approach them, what you say, how you follow up and how you document this process.
Activity breeds results. If you aim to send 100 emails, to make 10 connect calls per day and 1 of them turns into a conversation, that turns into a meeting, then you’ll know in the future how many calls and emails you need to make every day to hit your number. Load these into your CRM and get cracking.
Read more: Why understanding your finances is the key to owning a financially fit agency?
How do you service your clients?
In so many agencies, the salesperson is still involved with delivery to the client. If there is any involvement, it should be only in the kick off / handover workshop at the beginning of the contract. Then the salesperson needs to get back to sales and let the account manager / project manager get on with delivering the work.
Perhaps once per quarter, there is a meeting with sales and services to discuss any potential up-sell opportunities and, then the salesperson can set up a meeting after the quarterly report to work in selling in more services.
At all times, there must be a person to sell the deal and a person to service the deal so that the salesperson can continue to sell. That way your account manager can deliver consistently on-time and get results for your clients.
That concludes our short blog series on “How to have an agency that you love”. If you haven’t gotten the chance to check out the last two parts, go for it now.
What do you think about our blog post?
Leave your comment below!