Here are the reasons that agencies fail, and what you can do to make sure your’s doesn’t. Dave talks about scaling, closing deals, process organization, and thriving in this economic recession. Our goal is to get you to aim high. Welcome to the In Work Guild Podcast.
Dave Valentine 0:07
Hey, Dave Valentine here, agency owners, this podcast is for you. I want to talk today about some of the reasons why agencies fail. And what you can do to make sure that you don't fail. The number one reason why agency owners fail, they think too small. Here's what I mean by that most agency owners that I talked to, they're like, Hey, I just want to grow by a few percent this year, I just want to keep what I've got, I would just like to maybe grow by a couple more clients this year, what ends up happening is the following, especially in an economic downturn, like we are starting to really feel you will lose clients because of nothing you've done wrong. They didn't manage their money. Well, they didn't hire the right people, they maybe overstaffed. They understand whatever it is, they started a project a building project, and they wanted to see it through because they got it locked in at a low rate, whatever happened financially. supply line. It's not in your control, but it affects your top line revenue, and it affects your bottom line profit. The reality is you have to be growing at scale and with velocity. And if you don't, what you're doing is you're essentially saying that no matter how good your work is, you will be fired before the business owner fires themselves. You have to be growing, you have to be ambitious, and your goals have to be big. If your goal is to grow by 50% this year, then that means you actually need to be aiming for a 200% increase. Now, why do I say 200% increase, because if you say well listen to grow by 50%. Dave, I need to have 20 new business development meetings booked every single month, I need those 20 so that I can close five, I'm going to DQ half of them, they're going to be half, they're still available. So I'll have 10 Out of the 20. And then out of those 20, I only need to close five and really good closer, that gets me to my numbers, that's where I want to be the issue. And the concern for you will be this, if you aim for 20 meetings, you're probably going to come away with six, seven, if you aim for at meetings, you'll certainly blow past that 20 that you need, you'll probably land somewhere around 30 to 40. And then you're going to be able to DQ more, or you could DQ the same amount, maybe let's just say that you keep the queuing 50%. But your close rate isn't as good as you thought it was gonna be. Most agency owners don't know this, but a valid close rate on qualified customers that come through inbound or outbound methods. So a non referral method, an excellent salesperson will close 25 to 30% of their deals, the deals that are qualified, that means that out of those, let's again, let's say you booked 40 meetings, you DQ 20 of them, you have 20 left, if you're a great salesperson, you're going to close five or six of those deals, that's we're going to aim bigger, however small, you think you will only get to a certain degree, if you aim higher, you're going to go further. That's the number one reason why agency owners struggle to grow is they start to think small and they stop thinking big. Second thing is this, they'll get focused on creative, they don't just want to do something that's beautiful. I want to build a beautiful website, I want to have these really great flowcharts of how people work through the funnel, and they get to the place and I retarget them with this. And I do that. And I love the detail of my plan. A lot of agency owners will become infatuated with the processes of how their services function, instead of thinking what's going to be the fastest most effective way for us to get results for our clients, what's going to help them see the biggest return on their investment. You have to think quickly with speed because that's where we're at people don't have dollars and cents that they had two years ago. They're pinching pennies, they're struggling to find results like they were before. So with that struggle, I'm going to tell you the reality, you're going to need to find more efficient ways and more effective ways to help clients reach their goals. If you do this, then what's going to inherently occur is you're going to find streamline processes that will make your lift to get a client going or to get client results much lighter. You'll also find new ways to get better results and shorter amounts of time. And with that what She'll do as you increase client retention and client happiness. Are you an agency owner that's tired of being tired, you're trying to find the next client, make sure that your client success team is actually doing their job and generating results for clients. And you can't keep going. You haven't taken a vacation while you're tired. And you know, this isn't sustainable, but you're not sure what to do next. If you're ready to grow and scale your agency without killing yourself, and to actually enjoy your life, go to dream agency quest.com. And check out the dream agency quest program. The Dream agency quest program is designed specifically for you by yours truly, I've done this with multiple agencies now over the years. And as you all know, I've built and grown and scaled my own agencies with great success, it's time for you to experience the same. When I was in your shoes, I remember hearing similar pitches from different people. And I didn't believe it. The thing that I didn't realize was that even though I was a really smart person, there were some things that you can only learn through wisdom and experience. Now, I've been doing this for 10 plus years, and I want to give you everything that I've learned, the best part is it's not just the courses or being a part of a mastermind, it is all those Plus, we're actually going to write your cold email outreach, cold LinkedIn outreach for you. And we're going to show you the very same tools that the SDR agency that I own, actually uses to book its own meetings for their clients. If you're ready to grow and scale and then find operational efficiencies so that you can exit and work as little as possible in your agency, go to dream agency quest.com and click on the Schedule A consult button for more information. Okay, number three reason why agency owners don't grow a lack of organization. Okay, so here's what I mean by lack of organization, I want you to step back for just one second and talk to yourself about the following things. Okay, what is your process for onboarding a new client? If you weren't in your agency tomorrow? Could your team onboard a client as effectively as you? And if not, why? When you hire a new employee, how quickly can you get them up and running? And I don't mean up and running as in, they have a laptop and they know how to log into your email accounts. Know, how quickly can they become an effective staff member for you that's actually doing client work or admin work or whatever it is that they're doing? How effectively do you have information dashboards about how your clients are doing, how your finances are doing, and how your marketing efforts are going? All of these things are process oriented. And there's a fascinating statistic that goes to the idea of processes, procedures and organization. Here it is, without organization, your staff, just looking for digital assets within your Google Drive or Dropbox, monday.com, Asana, clickup, wherever you keep your information, your average employee without effective organization will spend an hour a day looking for assets in folders, hearing, they're going to waste an hour every day, just looking for assets. If you don't have effective organization, you have to start to organize your thoughts, your processes your procedures, so that you can hand off your work. Most agency owners are exceptional practitioners in whatever space you're in, you may be an amazing email marketer, you may be an amazing web developer designer, ad guy, you may be a masterful content writer, you may be able to run social media like no one's business. What often ends up happening is those practitioners get so much work as a freelancer or they're in a big staff. And they're seen as the superstar. They take some clients with them or maybe again, they're a freelancer, and they start building a team around them to help them service those clients. And the creative mind is very different than the organized administrative mind. And they start to lose some horsepower as the organization grows just due to client acquisition.
If you have this problem going on, it's going to hinder your growth and it could lead to your failure. But these three items that I've just discussed are the three things that are going to help you really accelerate your growth and 2023. My charge to you is this. Do not be afraid of the pandemic of the recessions don't be afraid of the downturns encourage yourself to see them as an advantage. There are going to be sadly 1000s of agencies and freelancers who close their doors 10s of 1000s forever, because they can't get the results they want Scot in their given space. What this means is the agencies that stick around, just like you know, hate, just like in 2020 will actually gain ground on everyone else. And what I mean by that is you will start to weed out the people that aren't professionals, but the pros are going to stick around and find success. So, my dear agency owner, leader that's listening to this. Take heart, take action, make things happen. Have a kick ass day.