September is here! Be sure to . . .

I hope you're doing awesome as you're watching this video. September has arrived. We're already coming very, very close to closing out the third quarter of 2021. Feels like the year's zooming by. I think it's really important, and the reason I shoot these videos is just as agency owners, we're so hard charging and there's so many things coming at us from a million different directions. If we don't take stock to recognize the end of each of our periods, each month, each quarter, each year, and use that as an opportunity to pause, reflect, and kind of re-energize ourselves going forward, we miss momentum and we fail to make the necessary adjustments that will help us hit our goals and our targets. So I wanna just use this video as a chance for you to recognize there's some things you wanna recap, right? You wanna look at your financials, you wanna look at your sales retention tracking sheet, you wanna look at your, kind of your accomplishments for the month, and really see if you're on track or off track for the quarter. The other thing you wanna do is you wanna acknowledge, right? If you hit certain benchmarks, if you hit certain targets, you need to acknowledge that personally, you need to acknowledge that to your team and to the people that are involved. Throw out some high fives, throw out some golden bricks, throw out some love, and also acknowledge, hey, look, we missed some things. Maybe there's some things we need to change and modify. So take some time to acknowledge, And the last thing is, most importantly, to refocus, right? If you don't refocus and reset plans and goals, if you're off track especially, this quarter could quickly pass by, and before you know it, the year's over, and you're not where you could have been and where you should be within your business. So this is your call right now. Pause what you're doing. I wanna ask you to give yourself 10 minutes. To do this process. Recap, like, and what I'm looking for here is sales outcomes, right? Ideally, you had a goal for yourself for the month of August. Ideally, you have a goal for yourself for this third quarter. You've got a goal for this entire year. You need to pause and say, well, what was the goal for August? How many new clients did we anticipate landing? How many did we actually get? If you don't pause, then all your goal setting becomes a waste of time, right? Goals in the absence of accountability feel like a waste, a waste of time, waste of energy. And so members, pull up your sales retention tracking sheet, right? We've plotted out the year, we've set goals and targets for ourselves. Find out whether you're on track or off track for the quarter. The other thing you wanna look at is, is the KPIs that we track really closely. Our KPIs in digital marketing agencies as it relates to growth and momentum really are number of strategy sessions, right? We should all know how many strategy sessions we need to get, how many sales appointments we need in order to hit the sales outcomes that we set. Usually it's somewhere between 10 and 20 strategy sessions that we're gonna need to land 3 to 5 or 6 new clients on a monthly basis? Members, we've got a great mechanism to help you track this so you can know how many you actually had and what your close ratios are. If you haven't built it, I would encourage you to get that set up, but if you do, go and check it, right? 'Cause this will dictate whether you've done the necessary work to hit the targets that you're after or not. So those are the things you wanna recap, right? How many clients? How much recurring revenue? On track, off track? Did we hit our KPIs? And you know, some of them are sales KPIs, number of strategy sessions, that's the main one. The other KPI as you grow that you're probably looking at is retention. What was our retention rate for this month or for this last month? How many clients did we land? How many did we lose? Run that formula and get clear retention-wise, especially if you're after, like you've got more than 50 clients. At that point, you've got a team of account managers and that's a metric you wanna be looking at. Really closely. So these are the things I wanna ask you to recap. Should, if you got the right tracking mechanisms in place, should take you 3 to 5 minutes. The next thing we wanna do is we wanna acknowledge. Acknowledge either for yourself or for the team that's involved what these numbers are, right? If the team knows our goal is to land 6 new clients and to retain at 97% for the month, and all you do is hard charge every month, and you don't even acknowledge, "Hey, wow, we hit our sales targets. Congratulations. Hey, we retained at 99% this month. We only lost one client. Great work, kudos." It can really just start to feel like a slog. So be sure you take time to throw some golden bricks, positives. "Hey, you know, great work, kudos. These are some things we got. These are some things that we've accomplished." It's also a chance to acknowledge if you didn't hit the target, right? And don't take this as something you're going to acknowledge in a negative way. There's very little positive that comes from, "Hey, you wouldn't do it. You, what are you guys doing? You guys are terrible." But if you do take the time to say, "Hey guys, you know, the goal for the month was to land 7 new clients. Unfortunately, we only got 3, right? And I just want you guys to know that was the goal. That's on me as the owner. That's on this whole operation that we're running." and we're going to make some changes going into September to make sure we turn things around, right? So acknowledge the good or the bad, right? This is just at the beginning of the month, at the beginning of the quarter, recap, acknowledge, and celebrate if there's something to celebrate, right? If you hit a new sales target, if you exceeded a target that you set for yourself, do something. Do like, go take yourself to a nice lunch, maybe buy the team something like a gift card or something. You're gonna get more of what you celebrate. So take a little bit of time to celebrate. Now, last and probably most important is we wanna refocus, right? This is the time to say, all right, we look past, now it's time to look at the future. Where are we going this month and where we need to get to by the end of the quarter? And so refocus is let's go look at the target. For the month. How many clients are we gonna land in the month of September? How much recurring revenue are we gonna grow? Where does that put us by the end of the month? And make that ever-present. So yes, I want you to add that to your sales retention tracking sheet so you know, okay, I know where that number is, but spreadsheets tend to get lost in the fray. What I would encourage you to do, the more present you can make your goals, for yourself, for your team, the higher probability you're actually going to do the work, you're going to acknowledge whether you hit it or not. Um, print it out on a big sheet of paper, put it up on a whiteboard somewhere that you have to see it every single day. This month we're going to land 6 clients, our recurring revenue is going to grow by $12,000 per month, and we will end the month at whatever, right? Put that up in front of you. I promise you, if you make that present either on a printed 8.5 by 11 sheet, or you take out a whiteboard and you put it up and you write in big letters, "This month, this is what we're gonna do," you're gonna have a higher probability of accomplishing that. So really get clear on the target for the month, and then think a little bit about the plan, right? If the goal is 7 new clients, what are you doing this month that you already have in play, and what are some of the new initiatives that you're gonna roll out that are going to help bring that into reality, right? Could be getting the cold outreach strategies rolling. It could be making sure you get your webinar done and you fully promote it and syndicate it to the list. Could be testing some new Facebook ad strategies. Could be reaching out to some new joint ventures that you could run a JV webinar with, right? Just pick one or two strategies that are going to have the biggest impact that are going to move you to the accomplishment of that target. So great work. Just remember, it's September. There's 1 month left in this third quarter, and then we're on to the fourth quarter, and before you know it, 2021 is over. Recap, acknowledge, and refocus, and let's make it an amazing September, and let's close the third quarter strong. Let me know in comments here, what are some of the new initiatives? If you have wins, if like, if you knocked it out of the park, in, in August? I want to know about that. Put that in the comments. Let me know what are some of the wins, what are some of the things that you're celebrating, and then what are some of the new initiatives you're going to roll out this month to make sure that you do end the quarter strong. That's it for now. I'll talk to you soon.