Stepping Off The Client Service Hamster Wheel Of Doom!

Let's talk about that pesky client service Hamster Wheel of Doom. You know, where you're so busy servicing clients that you've got no time to breathe, let alone focus on the future of your agency. And when we're permanently stuck in client service mode, we can't see the wood for the trees. So that's what I'm going to dig into in today's podcast. So let's get going. I'm Rob Da Costa and this is the Agency Accelerator Podcast. As someone who has stood in your shoes, having started, grown and sold my own agency, I know just how it feels in the ups and downs downs of agency life. So this podcast aims to ease your journey just a little by sharing mine and my guests experiences and advice as you navigate your way to growing a profitable, sustainable and enjoyable business. Look, I get it. We all want to do a great job for our clients and go the extra mile. But when does going the extra mile become extra 10 miles and result in unprofitable work and a stressed out team? Now sometimes a demanding client results in us not delegating work to our team if we have one, or letting the client think that we are always going to be the main point of contact. Even though there may well be other people in the team that should be managing the client and account and perhaps even know more about what's going on on the day to day than we do. Nevertheless, the client keeps deferring to us. Now does any of this ring true with you and sound familiar? Well if that's the case, then you are constantly going to be feeling that you don't have enough time to focus on the future of your business because you're so busy servicing clients stuck on the client service Hamster Wheel of Doom. Now this is a vicious cycle, or maybe I should call it a vicious wheel. Because we have to find a way of stopping that hamster wheel, climbing off of it and making some changes so that we're able to allocate enough time to steer our ship towards that beautiful desert island rather than the iceberg that's in the other direction. And you may well know that you need to spend some time in strategy mode, but you just don't have enough time in your average nine to five day. But that doesn't mean you should be working longer hours to compensate for this. It means that we need to work smart butter and get client work off our plates. Now there are a million ways to solve this. It's like untangling a tangled ball of string. So where do you Start. So this is something that we really dig into in my self running agency membership. But today I want to share with you seven ideas on how to start changing this Stop the client service, hamster, Wheeler Doom and get a better relationship with your clients. It all starts by making sure you have a respectful partner partner relationship with your clients rather than that really imbalanced customer supplier relationship where you become the person at the bottom of the food chain that gets beaten up all the time. And that starts by the very first conversations you have when your customer is a prospect and you ensure that you are being consultative at every step of the process so that they see you as an equal partner. Next, you need to get some really good boundaries with your clients. And one of the best ways of doing this is by having a clear scope of work in place that both you and your client understands and that you working towards. Now, it's important that the scope of work isn't just created when you win the client, but it is reviewed regularly and it is kept up to date in line with the client's larger and of course ever changing business goals. This also is one of the great ways of making sure that you retain your client for the long term and you don't just do the same things month in and month out. Being the consultant, you should be able to push back on clients, but it's amazing how many people form the belief that oh my God, if I push back in a professional manner, then the client will be unhappy and fire me. This is especially true for younger, less experienced team members who always want to jump as high as the client asks, regardless of the fee that they're paying. So if this is something that's happening to you, you need to make sure that you train everyone throughout your organization to understand the boundaries with your clients. So we need to find new ways of saying yes or maybe no to clients. Now, the way I see it is that when a client asks you to do something that's outside of this agreed scope of work, you've got responses that you can choose from. So let me just step through all of those. So number one is you could just say yes, we can do that if you feel it's reasonable or it's within the scope of work or it won't take too much additional effort because after all, we don't want to be jobsworth. Secondly, you say to a client, yes, we can do that, but we need to swap something else out that's already in the scope of work. And then you want to discuss with your client what's going to be removed from this month plan in order to do the additional task. Number three is you can say, yes, we can do that, but we can't do it till this future date. And that means sort of forward passing this to a time where you feel you will have more capacity in the client's plan to do this additional task, especially if your client's work is seasonal. Now, number four is we can say, yes, we can do that, but there will be an additional charge. Now, this is an obvious one, but perhaps the one that people are really nervous about saying. But at the end of the day, as I always say, if you go and buy and pay for a cup of coffee from Starbucks and then as you're leaving and you've got your change, you say, oh, by the way, can I have a croissant too? Without expecting to pay, then they're going to think you're a bit crazy and look at you rather strangely. So why don't we apply the same thinking in our agency? Now, as I said, there were five ways to respond and I've only given you four. So the fifth way is to politely decline the work if you can't use one of the first four options that I've outlined. Now we are allowed to say, no, your world will not fall apart, especially if you feel that the client or the project is going to be a challenge to deliver and perhaps their taking the mickey. Another way to get yourself off the client service hamster Wheeler Doom is to schedule and block out time in your diary that will never be available to your clients, just like hopefully weekends and evenings aren't. And you keep this time sacrosanct to work on the strategy of your agency that is the future of your agency. Now, I appreciate that this can't be days, but it certainly could be two to three hours, maybe two to three times a week. Now, this will only work if you see this time that you've blocked out as the most important time and therefore it can't be changed. As opposed to the least important time that as soon as a client asks you to do something, you immediately overwrite it. The key to making this work, as I found out, is to plan exactly what you're going to do during that time that you've blocked out so that you know when you get to that time exactly the steps that you're going to do and you're less minded to change it. If a client asks you to book something or you get to that time slot, you're not quite sure what you'll do, so you end up getting sucked into client work. Now the next thing you need to do as you grow is to make sure that you've got a really solid account management team beneath you who can not only deliver great work, but can also manage and communicate effectively with clients. This is a huge step towards not only getting off the client service Hamster Wheel of Doom, but also building an agency that is less dependent on you and I. E. A self running agency. Take my client Simon Isaac from Capsule Marketing. Now I interviewed Simon in episode 118 of the podcast, so go back and have a listen to that. But he's put many of the steps I'm outlining today in place in his agency and that's really freeing him up to be way less involved with client delivery and pursue some of the other interests he has outside of his agency, yet still find time to focus on the bigger picture, strategy and business development, two areas that he is really well placed to deliver. Don't kid yourself that you don't have time to focus on the future of your agency, because if you don't find this time, I guarantee that you're going to go around in circles taking two steps forward and two steps back and you're going to feel like you're constantly bashing your head against a brick wall and that you are at the beck and call of your clients and your team. And this is going to lead you to feeling really stressed, your agency feeling really stressed. And of course you're going to be stuck permanently on the client service Hamster Wheel of Doom. So change your mindset to thinking about, first of all, how much time you have available to do client work and secondly, what is the most important use of your time? Because as I said, it should be if you're the leader of your agency, it should be about planning the future of your business. Now to give this a little bit of context, you're likely to be spending around 65% of your time each week doing client work, maybe 30% of your time working on strategy, the future of your agency, and then 5% of your time on admin, like running your agency. That is all the admin tasks such as invoicing and HR and so on. Of course, these splits vary from agency to agency and from person to person depending on your role in the agency, but I just wanted to give you a rough guide to give you some context about this. Now, a lot of agency owners I chat to are in this exact position of being stuck on the client service Hamster Wheel of Doom and no matter what small tweaks they have made, they find themselves getting pulled right back into client work. So I hope this episode has given you a bit of food for thought and a few ideas of what you can do to start getting off the client hamster wheel of doom and know that it is possible. Okay, so that's it for today's episode. Short and sweet with some actionable points. I hope you found it useful and insightful and it provided you with a few ideas. And if you did find it useful, then please do consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're watching this on a video, please make sure you give me the thumbs up. You've shared it with your colleagues and you've subscribed. And if you're listening on Apple, please do leave a review. Because as you know, a review will help the algorithm show the podcast to more people and therefore help me impact more people. All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom of the podcast page that you're listening to and click on the Leave a Review link now. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week and I will see you next week on the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.