If you want to be a million dollar agency, then there are 4 lessons I’ve learned that you can’t live without.
Lesson 1: No ZERO Lead Days
If you were the owner of a restaurant on one of the busiest streets in town but you noticed nobody was coming into your place of business, how many days of zero customers would you let go by before you did something about it?
Just like the restaurant, your agency should be attracting new leads every day but too many agencies only rely on word of mouth while allowing lead flow to be an afterthought
One of the most valuable assets a business has is its customer (and potential customer) database. This is your golden ticket because having the ability to market your agency to these people is an essential step AND this database should ALWAYS be growing.
As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is right now. If you’re not attracting leads every day, start now.
Lesson 2: Be A Lead Warming Expert
Every lead on the planet starts its life as a COLD lead. What about those hot word of mouth leads? Yup! Those started off cold too, and you had nothing to do with warming them up, it was the referral prospect who did the job of getting them ready for you.
Understand this: the agency that knows how to warm their own leads will have as many hot buyers as they could ever want.
Your prospect database likely contains all sorts of leads. Some good, some bad. Some are ready to buy today, some will be next week and others will never buy at all.
Why is this important?
You have the ability to warm up your leads. But if you’re like most agencies, you’re not talking to your prospects, you’re not spending time educating them and you’re not making them offers to create the opportunity to buy.
So what should you do? Email them, host webinars, tell them stories, give them valuable information that educates them, and build trust with them. Your prospect database will remain cold forever until you do something about it. Warm your leads, build a system to do it – or your competitors will.
Lesson 3: Gain MAXIMUM Wallet Share
The name of the game in building a million dollar agency is maximizing wallet share. That’s a fancy way of saying your clients should enroll in all of your services. Not just one or two, ALL of them. That’s the goal.
How many clients would you need to reach a million dollars if the average dollar sale was $2,500? (Hint: 400) But, how many do you need if the average client invested $2,500 per month? (Hint: 33)
Is it possible for a client of your agency to reach $2,500/month? And, even if it is, how many of your clients are meeting that level of commitment with you?
Building a big agency (or even one just big enough for you to live the kind of life you want) requires having a system for enrolling clients and growing the relationship with them over time.
Lesson 4: Don’t Get Trapped in Service Delivery
One of the most significant and riskiest traps an agency can find itself in is being stuck doing all of the work themselves
Agency owners are resourceful people! And, we often get into the web and digital marketing space because of our passion for actually doing the work. So, it’s no wonder as we become more successful, we end up taking on more and more work.
It’s a trap that ends in burnout and a lack of cash. It’s what keeps us in cycles of “feast or famine.”
Very few agencies avoid this trap and if this is you, that’s OK. We have to realize there are two primary reasons agency owners get stuck here.
1. They don’t know how to ask for help / can’t afford it
2. They don’t believe delegating work is possible.
Fortunately, the first one is easy to solve. There’s lots of training and help available about the steps to hire help and delegate work. There are also plenty of ideas and training on how to raise rates and charge more money.
Unfortunately, the second one (not believing it’s possible to delegate) is a little trickier to solve, though not impossible.
When I found it difficult to delegate work it was because the projects tended to be what I now refer to as “snowflake projects.” These are projects which are complex, unique, or just different enough that it makes it hard (or too time consuming) to actually hand them off to someone else. These projects are just easier to handle yourself.
While I derived a lot of pride from projects like these, it was these projects which tended to be the ones I ended up hating and making very little money from. The way out was to simplify and systemize the project delivery and be OK with saying no to projects which were going to take a significant amount of my personal time.
If you want a million dollar agency, you need to be busy doing things OTHER than service delivery. Trapping yourself in client work won’t allow you the energy or focus to feed the other areas of the business.
Moreover, if you want to learn more about how to get out of the trap of service delivery, I encourage you to apply for a call with our director of coaching. We'll help you map out a plan to get your agency where you want to be.
