There are very few agency owners who say that they don’t want to grow their business. Uncommon yes, non-existent, definitely not. Yet I’d argue, that in today’s market, even to stand still we need to grow. In many agencies, costs are up, and profit is stagnating or falling, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And the fact that you’re reading this article, means that you are an agency owner who wants to supercharge your agency’s growth. There’s a process to doing so and we’ll cover that now.
Make a Plan
When we start in business, many of us have an idea of where we want the agency to go. Often there’s a plan to find a few clients and we hope this will make us a bit of money.
And this works well for a while, mainly on the sheer determination to make our business survive. But to give our agencies a chance at longevity or to allow them to scale to the next level, we must become focused on planning.
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” I know this is credited to someone else but my Dad said this regularly to me when I was starting my agency.
Before we go any further. I love planning. I have short-term, medium-term and long-term goals. And there’s a plan for each of these. And it’s not that you can’t ever deviate from the plan, because you will. But whenever everything around you is in chaos, if you return to your plan, you know this was created in a moment of calm and if you stick to it, you’ll get through everything being thrown at you.
Create a 3-year plan for your agency. What do you want to achieve and how will we measure success?
What steps do you need to take to achieve your goals? What resources do you need to meet this? How will you fund it?
If planning is new to you, or you want help with creating a robust plan for your agency, check out the Agency Growth Network programme. This is one of the core modules we share and focus on as part of the on-demand learning and your 1-1 business planning meeting.
Invest in Systems & Processes
To supercharge your agency’s growth you need to be able to scale efficiently. We all go through periods of rapid growth and in the early days, we suck it up and work harder just to keep our clients happy and the work coming in. But this is unsustainable and as our agency grows, even working to your maximum capacity may not be enough.
This is a good thing. Your business is growing, it’s becoming bigger than you. It’s also pretty scary and one of the biggest challenges any agency owner faces is scaling the output of their studio to meet the needs of their clients while retaining the level of service their clients demand.
Investing in a CRM or project management system is often the first step to systemising your processes. When it comes to data, the better quality you put in, the better results you get out of it. The exact opposite is true also.
Investment doesn’t stop with systems, processes are the key to managing an ever-increasing workload. Are your team equipped with the knowledge, skills and experience needed to maintain and exceed your set standards? For every repeatable task or service, there should be a process and this should be visible to all those who need it.
Maintain Profitability As You Grow
The hardest part of growing any business is maintaining profitability as you grow. There’s a delicate balance between keeping overheads tight and having the ability to output the projects you’re being tasked with. You won’t always get it right and there will be setbacks and challenges around every corner.
Onboarding New Staff
It takes time to train new staff to the level where they reach maximum productivity. Put effort into creating a robust onboarding process, where you can manage the expectations of the staff member and that of your business need.
Staff Retention
Today more than ever, employees are transient. Creating a culture where employees want to stay is critical. To replace awfully trained staff members could take a year from recruitment to onboarding. This costs time, but importantly it costs money and reduces the productivity and profitability of the business. Every new employee comes at a cost to the business, sometimes this can be significant when you consider capital outlay on equipment or software.
“Sell Like F*ck”
Excuse the language. I’ll credit my brother and ex-business partner with this one. To supercharge your agency’s growth selling needs to become a priority. The process through which you support existing clients and build a sales pipeline of new leads must be thoroughly considered.
Sales are the lifeblood of any business and our focus as owners is ensuring our sales and marketing teams work cohesively to build a constant stream of leads that result in new business.
However important new business is, it is always cheaper and easier to retain a client than it is to get a new one. Often we take our clients for granted or insist that they are happy because of the service. I know from experience that many clients stick with agencies because it’s easier to do so.
Well, that is until it isn’t. And the agency rep that shows the most love and provides the easiest solution will win your client’s business. Eventually.
Innovate Continuously
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. This applies to all areas of life, but particularly business growth.
The business we operate in changes daily, and the challenges we face evolve slowly, then all at once. The services we once offered are now close to being obsolete and have been replaced with vertical videography of all things. Who knew?
To grow your agency you must be at the forefront of innovation, both in terms of service offering, but also in how you conduct business. Automation, AI, and geographic independence were largely unknown in business a handful of years ago. Today they are top of mind worldwide.
Growing your agency won’t be easy, but there’s a process to doing so. Whether you earn 30k a month or 300k, our Agency Growth Network and Creative Mastermind programmes will help you navigate the complexities of growing an agency now and in the future.