How to Improve Your Agency Business in 2018

How do you build an agency that allows you to live the dream that you have for yourself, for your family, for your community, for your team, while at the same time helping your clients knock it out of the park and doing it all profitably? These are the big questions that we tackle here on the Agency Journey podcast. I am your host, Andrew Demski. Now let's get to it.

Hello. Welcome to another week's episode of Agency Journey. This week, episode 133, you guys have either a special treat or just a little surprise. Hopefully not in the other direction. It is. It's my good friend Andrew. I call him Dimmer. And myself here talking with you guys who don't have a different guest. Technically, Andrew is my guest for this one. Dimmer, how you doing?

I'm doing good, buddy. How you doing today?

I am doing very well. We are recording this on Friday before this one goes out, and we wanted to do a quick episode here to throw in, just kind of chat through. We're at the very beginning of December 2017. As we're recording this, I realize not everyone listens at exactly the same time. So basically, you've got, you know, four weeks, three. Four weeks left before 2018 is upon us. So what are the things that people should be doing to get ready for this? And I feel like we kind of go in. You emphasize different parts of a business at different times over the course of any business. So our advice this year, probably a little bit different from our advice last year and advice for the year before, just kind of based on our experiences, the agencies, who we're talking with and working with and what we're seeing, what we're emphasizing for ourselves. But I thought you had some good thoughts to share, so I kind of wanted to unleash you and have you kick us off here with your advice to agencies and anybody listening as far as preparation for 2018.

Yeah. When I look back at our business, I see communication being so vital in all phases. You know, gray the internally, just, like, talking and communicating with each other like that. There's so much value to that when it comes to, like, maintaining healthy partnerships. Like, you and I are business partners. So, like, talking through challenges like that, communicating how we're feeling about different things, staying on the same page, like, that's so important. Communicating with your team, opening up channels so that your team can communicate to you how they're feeling, how they're doing, how they want to grow, how they want to be pushed, you know, and you communicating to them areas that they need to grow. Areas that they're doing really, really well in, things like that. And also client wise, like keeping channels of communication open with your clients. I know when I think back about our time at Guavabox, a lot of the deals that didn't go so well were ones where communication. There was a lot of friction in the communication and there wasn't shared expectations with those clients. And then the projects that were just knock it out of the park. There was always consistent communication with those clients. There were shared expectations from the beginning. And whenever anything positive popped up, it was addressed early on and there were steps taken to open up those opportunities to keep the conversation going right there. So as I look forward to 2018, as I'm, you know, I'm in, I'm under the hood with agencies every single day. That's just what my role is here at Do Inbound. So if, if I could like speak any advice or say anything into these businesses would be establish rhythms for communication. Weekly rhythms, quarterly rhythms, biannual rhythms, where you are continuing to bring your team back internally and client facing to shared goals, shared visions, shared KPIs so that everyone is on the same page moving forward. One thing that has been really, really valuable for us is having a standard meeting agenda for our internal growth team meetings. We've been coming up on two years now, meeting every single week, going over the same agenda, working towards our quarterly rocks, like our big goals for a quarter, sharing. What are the issues that are coming up right now? What are the things that are in our path that are kind of slowing us down? And having that regular pattern, that regular rhythm really establishes kind of a shared vision on the same fixed point that you're growing towards. Because if you do not have those regular opportunities and you're not following that standardized agenda, not the same talking points each week obviously, but the same rhythm for each of your meetings, each of your standups, you lose that perspective of where you're trying to go. And as time goes by, the team drifts apart because we individually set our own goals and our own visions for where we're trying to go. So internally, how can you in 2018 establish a meeting rhythm with your core team to kind of drive the growth and direction of your agency? What are the big goals that you have for 2018? How do you want 2018 to be different than 2017? Are you going to grow by 50%, 100%? Are you trying to grow your team size? Change the profile of the type of client that you work with? All of these things are really big goals they're all good goals. But if you're going to set a goal, you've got to have regular checkpoints reminding you and your team of that goal and kind of crossing off the steps in the ladder that will eventually arrive or bring you in the team to that goal. So establishing those rhythms internally I think is really, really important for the core team, for your service team. Just like getting everyone around the table on a weekly basis, doing your standup, reviewing where each client is at, going through the different task stages, understanding where is each task at in the workflow, where are your deliverables at? Is there anything that's late or high risk that the team is looking at right now, or is there anything that, that we need to pay attention to? Are we looking at client delays that need to be followed up with? Establishing regular rhythms for those kind of check ins, make sure that you don't allow any client fires to fester. Really make sure that you and the team are putting your best foot forward internally, getting everyone on the same page so that you can service the client even better. When you go into your regular client meetings. And for those meetings, getting a client on the phone every week or being in the client's office, if you can do that face to face, is always better, if you can pull that off than a phone call. But if you can do a video call once a week with your poc, if you can do a strategy session once a month with the people that are decision makers in the organization and keep bringing them back to the KPIs that you said at the beginning, keep showing how you're moving towards those KPIs, or if you're not, here are the adjustments that we made to bring us back towards those KPIs. Those regular meeting rhythms, Gray, they're vital to just get your finger on the pulse of what's going on with the client, to maintain the relationship, to continue to build trust with them. Because at the end of the day, they're really empowering you as an agency to grow their business. That's a lot of trust to put on your shoulders. And for you to just think, I can get the contract, walk away, do the work and not do anything else to maintain that, that's foolishness. And I know because I've done that, so I can speak to that with authority. But what we want to do is establish these rhythms of regular communication with our clients, regular communications with our teams, regular communications with our core team that's driving kind of the whole business. And with this rhythm in place Move towards big audacious goals that otherwise we wouldn't really have a hope for accomplishing as we look into 2018. Right.

Yeah, I think that's really good advice for people moving forward. And I think the communication thing kind of breaks down into like there's three different aspects. There's like at the simplest level, there's the content of what you're actually working through sets here. Do you have a weekly agenda or is it just scattershot? Whatever comes up and we feel like talking about no agenda, poor agenda, good agenda, that has a lot of impact. I think that's the one that most people think about when they think about communication. Like what are we communicating about? But you also have, obviously the biggest variable is the people. So what's the preparation? What are the communication styles? What are the attitudes of people coming into? What are whatever those communication, whether it's meetings or chatting or being face to face or whatever it is. And you also have the medium. So is this an in person meeting? Is it a phone call? Is it a video call? Is it written communication on Slack or Hipchat or something like that? So I think it would be helpful for people to not just sketch out what are we going to communicate through here, but let's also talk about who's there, what are the expectations around preparation and attitude and communication styles, the way that we talk to each other, how do leaders communicate and then also what's the right medium for each one of these types of meetings. So we don't typically run our, you know, like our day to day things that need to get done, which for the most part happens in Slack. Don't run those the same way as a big quarterly meetup in person to talk through rocks and review the past quarter and stuff like that. So I think figuring out the right, the appropriate mediums, setting expectations around and some basic ground rules, you're trying to train not just your team and yourself, but also your clients around the way that the appropriate ways of communicating and how things should get said. And then obviously the agenda is a big part of that because you do want to avoid those surprises where, hey, we haven't talked about, you know, we never check back on these. We said at the beginning when we were selling this that this was going to be the KPI. We haven't talked about it for six months now. Let's go back and look at it. It's typically not the, not the best way to handle things. So I think that's all good advice. Sorry, go ahead.

No, you're Great. It is. I think you're the point, you said about training your internal team and training your clients on how to communicate, that's gold right there. Because so many times when we bring on a new employee, we just think, oh, I hired them to do X, Y and Z, let me empower them to do X, Y and Z and not tap on the glass. And that's going to lead to chaos internally because you're not going to know what that person is doing. They don't really feel comfortable with communicating what they're doing, how they're doing it, what their progress is. Am I doing enough? Am I doing less than what their expectations were? So setting the ground rules for how internal communication should play out is actually going to make your team feel more comfortable, more empowered, because they know the operating environment that they are in. If you leave that ambiguous and you try to say, oh, we're kind of a flexible workplace environment here, you're actually going to stress your team out because they don't know what you're looking for. So if we can establish that rhythm of communication internally, that really sets them at ease. And the same thing with the clients there, if we can set the groundwork through the sales process of here is how this plays out and leverage your process for delivery as an asset in the sales process in that place, selling from a position of authority, you're selling as a guide to the client to help them solve their problems, not just someone who's going to do what they ask to be done. There's contractors out there that do that. As a value adding agency, your secret sauce is the process that you bring to the table. And just as important as the checklist for how to complete something is the communication pattern that you use to tell the story of what is being created and why decisions are being made. Because so often we do things as agencies that are good marketing decisions, but we don't tell that story to the client and, and present that on a regular basis because we don't have that established rhythm in place. We don't want to take the time to have that person step out of what they're doing and get on a call with us. We don't have a process to make that systematic and easy. So you don't need to spend four hours preparing for a meeting if you have these rhythms in place. So I think all of this around setting the expectations and teaching people how the system should operate is really, really, really important, both internally and client facing. And all of this, like all the communication stuff, gray, it builds on the foundation of those shared goals. And just knowing personally as an agency owner, what type of a business do you want to build? Step one, Step two, get your core team united around that vision of here's what we're trying to build together. Step three, establishing that vision of the type of client you want to help and not being the agency for anybody. And then step four, figuring out what is the process that we walk through to solve the problems that we want to solve. What are the client journeys that you walk clients through to get them from where they are today to where they want to be? And then step five, what are the processes that go into that journey so that these things are repeatable? And then what's the meeting structure that we're talking about right now? That kind of sits on the top layer, but it's such an important layer to move people through that journey and keep everyone healthy and happy and just so excited for the new year. Gray.

That'S awesome. We could go on for a long time about this, but let's go ahead and wrap this one up right here. Appreciate you listening. If you have feedback, you have experiences that you want to share, you have other people who you can think of, who you'd like to hear from on the podcast talking about this stuff, let us know. We are currently starting to set up our next season of podcast interviews. So coming out in mid, well first first quarter of 2018. So if there's any, any recommendations you have, feel free to send them over our way. That's always a helpful way to know. Here's specifically someone most of the time I feel like we've, we've kind of developed a good handle of who would make sense to bring on but helpful to know directly from folks. Hey, this person would be, I think they'd be an also fit for these reasons. Look at that. Figure out where there's a time in the content plan and get things booked from there. So anywho, as always, appreciate you listening. You have anything else you want to reach out to us about, feel free to do that. You can reach both of us, Andrew or myself via email. Just our first names, dooinbound.com and until next week, keep chugging. Want more great episodes like this one? Hey, I'm Gray MacKenzie, a host here on Agency Journey. I don't know about you, but sometimes I get a little overwhelmed when I find a new podcast. There are so many great episodes and great guests, it's hard to know which ones to listen to first. That's why we put together a list of the top 10 most downloaded episodes of Agency Journey. And you can get a copy of that list, plus all of our notes and takeaways just by texting the word do inbound to 44222. Again, that's do inbound all one word to 44222. Standard text rates apply. You don't want to miss these Great episodes texts do inbound to 44222 now.