Is it difficult for you to delegate to your team? Are you still handling everything yourself? Does your team feel empowered to take the initiative or do more work?  If you’re still at the center of everything, it's time to unlearn your old ways and elevate your team. When you do, you'll experience limitless agency growth. Today's guest thought clients expected to work directly with her and therefore found it hard to step away from daily operations. However, she learned to let go of this limiting mindset and embrace collaborative work. It was a humbling experience to see how much empowering her team made everything better. Now she finally gets to focus on strategy, growth, and agency culture.

Julianne Fraser is the founder of Dialogue New York, a digital marketing consultancy specializing in building influencer marketing strategies for lifestyle brands. For five years her agency has worked with corporate giants like Adidas and startups like Brooklinen amplifying their stories through influential voices.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• Growing agency employee growth paths.
• Building a collaborative approach to improve client relationships.
• Elevating your team to develop strategy on their own.
• Keeping high standards of quality as the agency grows.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM

Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

What Influenced the Vision for an Influencer Marketing Agency?

Julianne got into the industry just as brands started to understand the power of social media. She worked as a consultant at a startup accelerator where she gained valuable insight into the art of building client relationships. In her career, she laid the foundation of strategy work for many startups. Since then, influencer marketing has become a bigger part of marketing budgets. Just last year, investment in this area added up to over $16 million.

Working at several companies over the years, she also learned there are varying approaches to influencer marketing. The PR Approach, understanding relationships and creativity but no measurable results, Performance Marketing Approach, where they measure returns but no creative strategy, and the Automated Influencer Marketing Approach.

Having done all three approaches throughout her career, Julianne felt there was an opportunity to develop a strategy that incorporated all their benefits.

Her agency officially opened its doors in 2017 as a solo venture operating from Julianne's apartment. After 6 months her first hire was someone to handle execution. That time gave her a solid perspective on the ins and outs of all aspects of the operations; this was very useful as she grew her team.

How to Develop Agency Employee Growth Paths

Julianne felt humbled by the experience of hiring and mentoring a team. It’s been one of the greatest challenges but also one she greatly enjoys. Her view on how to hire, train, and manage has changed with experience. In the beginning, she mostly hired based on skill. Now, however, she’s learned the importance of culture fit and having a team that’s excited to learn.

In this sense, she admits to being old school in her approach to employee growth in the agency. Initially, new hires in coordinator junior roles were promoted to associate or manager after a couple of months. Now, however, she crafts her team’s growth by catering to their passions and talents.

She credits her business coach for teaching her the benefits of coaching her team for the role they want. Basically, getting people with very different abilities – whether for customer service, negotiations, or systems – on the same growth track will just ensure they’ll get bored and leave. It was a limiting belief based on old-school conceptions of growth and it took years to unlearn it.

Now she pinpoints each team member’s zone of genius and develops individual growth plans for them. It has worked wonders and helped her increase retention and creating a great culture at her agency.

Building a Collaborative Approach to Improve Client Relationships

For the longest time, Julianne was convinced she had to manage all client relationships. Like many agency owners, she believed clients were coming specifically to work with her. It was an old-school limiting belief that got in the way of her agency’s growth. Furthermore, she thought she should be the one developing all the strategy work for clients.

Fortunately, she realized the agency would grow by adopting a different approach. Building trust with clients is very important to the relationship, so there was a lot of work put into training. As to the strategy work, instead of doing it from start to finish, Julianne could break it into stages. Bringing in team members with expertise in creative concepts or copywriting transformed the process into a collaborative approach.

Today, she is completely out of client management and process. She solely focuses on strategy and growth. It has completely changed her role as an agency owner.

It was a humble awakening when Julianne realized she didn’t have to do everything herself and how much stronger the work is when the team collaborates.

Elevating Your Agency Team to Develop Strategy On Their Own

Julianne believes when teaching her team about strategy, why is more important than how. She explains the why can is related to the answers to these questions: What’s the client’s personality? Who are they reporting to? What do they care about?

In their training sessions, she pays special attention to whether her team notices relevant details. For example, if a client feels pressure from their CEO, she asks the follow-up question “How can we ease that for them?” These very subtle elements that don’t feel that important are crucial for Julianne.

When it comes to strategy, many agencies churn out the same copy/paste plans. However, Julianne is constantly challenging her team to break out from the norm. For her, every single detail that goes into the strategy must offer some sort of value.

Her team puts a lot of effort into building custom strategy for a specific client. Developing a competitive analysis is not that hard but adopting that unique mentality is what really made a difference in the quality of their work.

Keeping High Standards of Quality As Your Agency Grows

Julianne runs the type of agency where employees are judged more on results than the amount of time spent working. What she does expect of her team is maintaining the quality of work at 95% to 100%. Everything they put out has to be at the level of something she’d created herself or, ideally, better.

It’s important to keep high standards of quality as you grow your team and clients because it’s very common for agencies to allow quality to slide as workload increases. Of course, it’s not the same having two clients as having ten but that’s where teamwork and training come in. Be very thorough in your training and ensure your team is constantly striving to provide the best service.

For her, strategy is more than just the initial kickoff. They do put together a comprehensive strategy as a roadmap for a year-long engagement. However, she encourages her team to think about what’s coming down the pike every three months. They should ask themselves, is this too simple? Should we reinvigorate with fresh ideas? Do we need to pivot and change? This constant effort of always offering fresh ideas is what Julianne believes retains clients for long periods of time.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Can your agency employees make decisions without you? Are you frustrated that you keep putting out fires or re-explaining yourself over and over? Documenting processes isn't the glamorous part of being an agency owner. However, it’s a necessary part of growing your and the first step to exiting daily operations. Today’s guest runs an advisory agency where they help customers achieve profitability by documenting processes. He’ll talk about the biggest mistake agency owners typically make when it comes to documenting processes and how you can tackle this daunting task.

Chris Gwinn is the founder of Great Lakes Advisory, an agency that helps digital agencies implement EOS by creating more consistency, productivity, and profitability by documenting their processes and developing KPIs. They also offer customized training to ensure all processes are up to standard.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• 3 ways to identify your agency's core processes.
• How to start documenting agency SOPs.
• The biggest mistake people make when documenting processes.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM

Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

The Benefits of Having Clearly Defined Processes

In 2015, Chris’ dad was struggling with his business; constantly putting out fires and dealing with personnel issues. He asked Chris to take an objective look at their operations and financials. As he started to dissect operations and interview employees, he quickly found out they had NO did not have any documented processes or training, and didn't measure any KPIs. “It was essentially throwing them in a room and see if they’d figure it out on their own." There was no way to verify whether or not anyone was following processes.

His first instinct was to clearly define all the processes and organization. They needed clarity with step-by-step processes that lead to a specific result. It was also important to tie those results to specific KPIs so they could measure outcomes and build training around it. He felt that this plan would help all employees be better prepared to fulfill their tasks.

Dissecting the company’s financials and operations to build a process playbook helped him see how processes impact an organization. Employees feel the organization is investing in their professional development. The team becomes less reliant on their managers. At the same time, managers have better visibility into the operations and filled less of a technician role. Finally, having processes in place help the owner step away from daily operations and reduce hours working in the business.

3 Steps for Prioritizing Your Agency's Core Processes

If you’re not a detailed, process person, the thought of developing and implementing processes might give you some anxiety. However, you don’t necessarily have to put all the processes in place at once. According to Chris, the idea that you have to document absolutely every part of the operations is wrong. Instead of trying to document every single process, he advises focusing on the highest-impact items.

A good way to prioritize your core processes is to separate them according to these categories:

1. Impact. What are the 20% of processes that represent 80% of your agency’s activities and results? For most agencies, this is the sales process and client onboarding. Be sure to standardize these core processes.
2. Priority by headcount. How many people are performing certain processes? If it’s 50 people, then that would be a priority over a process only one person is performing.
3. Frequency. If it’s an ad-hoc process performed quarterly or annually, it ranks lower on the priority list than processes performed weekly or daily.

How to Start Documenting Agency SOPs

If you ask a salesperson to document what they do, they might not know where to start. Once you have a list of priorities and break it down by the different departments, identify the subject matter expert. Who owns that particular process? It is usually the head of that department.

Basically, identify the process owners, the name of the process, how frequently it is performed, and how long it takes to perform. From there, you can share additional information, applications, or resources and outline the simple steps.

The idea is to create a resource that one person can follow from beginning to end without having to reach out to another person or another department. The goal of an SOP is to always achieve the same result or outcome by following the same steps.

Biggest Mistake People Make When Documenting Processes

Overall, the biggest mistake Chris sees when it comes to documenting processes is thinking it has to be perfect from the start. In those cases, people spend way too much time trying to perfect their SOPs rather than making them available.

Documenting your processes is an evolving process. The agency processes when you have 5 employees won’t necessarily be the same as when there is a team of 50. Set clear expectations of how the processes are likely to change and create areas of accountability for the people responsible for documenting their core processes.

Finally, set a cadence of reviewing those processes every year or every six months to ensure they’re all up to date.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Are you struggling to connect the dots between agency services and the results you drive for clients? Do you produce leads for clients without being sure if they're following up? What about your own marketing efforts? Do you have a process in place for outreach and follow-up? Throwing money at marketing initiatives without correctly measuring their performance can leave agencies with unanswered questions and uncertainty. An effective CRM is the answer; which is why today's guest has specialized in helping agencies enhance their sales process with the right tools. In this interview, he talks about some common mistakes agencies make with follow-up and processes and how they can improve.

Jason Kramer is the founder of Cultivize, a marketing technology company that helps B2B businesses and digital agencies streamline their sales and marketing process and retain more clients. He’s one of the world's few certified strategists and implementers for the SharpSpring platform.

In this episode, we’ll discuss:

• What to look for in a good CRM platform.
• Why agencies should insist clients use a CRM.
• How to improve your agency sales follow-up process.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM

Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

Podcast Takeover!!

Get to know your Smart Agency Guest Host: Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the co-founder of Rise25, an agency that helps companies launch and run podcasts profitably. He followed Jason’s podcast and eventually joined the mastermind and has been a guest on the podcast before. Today, he’s helping Jason bring something new to the Smart Agency podcast audience by interviewing a special guest and getting a new perspective to the show.

Changing Your Niche to Adapt to the Market

Back in 2001, Jason Kramer was working at an agency in New York with big clients like Virgin Atlantic Airways. After 9/11, the agency went from 60+ people to 14 people very quickly. At the time, he was already doing some freelance work on the side so his choices seemed clear. He could either go work for another big agency or he could start his own business. That decision led to starting his first agency, focused on web development services.

After a while, it became harder to sustain his business with the emergence of new tools that made website design more accessible. He eventually sold that agency.

In his new agency, Jason and his team help B2B businesses and agencies streamline their sales and marketing process and are top Sharpspring integrators.

Technology alone doesn’t solve problems, so Jason's secret sauce is leveraging his experience in order to identify pain points in his clients' processes. Next, they pair clients up with the right technology to meet their goals. The challenge is having the right team to adopt the technology. It’s a lot of moving parts and Jason’s key to success is his team’s hands-on approach. They’re involved from the very beginning and have a deep understanding of how to customize technology to reach clients' goals.

What to Look for in a Good CRM Platform

When they first start working with Cutlivize, many clients don't have CRM technology in place.  So the first step is to analyze whether or not a SharpSpring is a good fit. Their criteria for a good CRM include intuitive adoption for new users, affordability, and fully inclusive of add-on capabilities.

Most of their clientele doesn't have a CRM and is starting from scratch with SharpSpring. About 30% of their clients transition from another CRM platform to SharpSpring with their help. However, that 30% usually needs some convincing to consider the idea of migrating to a new system.

When clients are using another platform, they’ve usually stuck to that technology simply because they’ve been using it for a long time. Some clients are using dated systems and worry they won’t be able to export their data. Another big concern is training the client team on a new CRM.

In those cases, Jason asks to see how the company uses this technology on a daily basis. The majority of clients discover they’re not actually using the technology as much as they thought. Whatever the concerns, the most important element to ensure a successful migration will be that the sales team is a part of that conversation.

Why Agencies Should Insist Clients Use a CRM

The Cultivate team has worked with over 30 agencies helping their clients get more out of a CRM for their clients. Jason says those agencies are leaving money on the table because any agency is only half the equation. They’re normally getting leads into the organization. However, it’s up to the client to actually talk to those clients, close the deal, and report the results of those leads. You can effectively track your results for clients if they aren't tracking things on their end as well.

According to Jason, agencies that don’t offer a CRM platform service struggle because the clients don’t follow through on those leads. This ultimately affects the results clients see and they will continue to shift agencies. In reality, the problem is the client doesn’t have a system in place to track everything.

For these cases, Jason’s team offer to help with strategic planning and integrating the CRM so they can have transparency to show what’s actually working.

Additionally, based on their model, it can work as an additional passive revenue stream for the agency. The agency offers value to the client and gets an additional revenue stream for something their team doesn’t even have to touch.

How to Create an Effective Agency Sales Follow-Up Process

Typically, when Jason’s team comes in to assess a company they find there’s some sort of follow-up process. However, it tends to be inconsistent. Most have no rhyme or reason for their outreach efforts. On the other hand, there are some who are too aggressive with their outreach. They make multiple attempts every week, making phone calls and sending emails, which quickly turns people off.

Generally speaking, follow-up should be done in a way that is ethical but also friendly and not overbearing. Additionally, these interactions should be tracked. If you sent 50 quotes, how many of those are likely to close? Which ones do you still need to follow up with? At the end of the day, you want to sell, not be stuck with mundane emails forever. That’s why a follow-up process is so important. Prepare templates to ensure you’re sending emails that provide value and a reason for reaching out. This empowers the sales team and makes their outreach more effective.

What Can You Do to Improve?

1. Understand their goals. The best way to help your client make a decision is to understand them and their business. It can take a few months to get a client going and excited to work with you. If that client usually has a very busy summer season, for instance, explain that your process can take up to three months to get ramped up. Therefore, it's important to get started three months or more before that busy summer season.
2. Providing value and education. Instead of sending back-to-back messages asking when they’re going to make a decision, you can explain a little bit about your process, how it’s done, and why you’ll need a certain amount of time to do it. Educating the client and providing information is helpful without being pushy.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program enables you to take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.

Do you lack a clear vision for your agency? Communicating the vision is the best way to empower your agency team. An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction and makes it more difficult to scale your digital agency. Today's guest has grown his agency to nearly 8-figures and admits only recently things have become more clear. He expands on how a lack of direction was one of his first mistakes with the agency and how he has been getting through rough times thanks to the support of other entrepreneurs.

Ryan Kutscher is the founder and CEO of Circus Maximus, an advertising agency focused on brand narrative and content creation. They are entrepreneurs, branding, and advertising specialists led by a constant team of proven professionals. As an entrepreneur, Ryan’s passion is building brands, telling unique stories, and creating scalable systems that help brands grow long-term.

In this interview, we’ll discuss:

• How to be the beneficiary of your own hard work.
• An unclear vision leads to a lack of direction for the team.
• 2 ways to stop being the problem solver and empower your team.
• Finding the right support to get your agency through hard times.

Subscribe

Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM

Sponsors and Resources

E2M Solutions: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by E2M Solutions, a web design, and development agency that has provided white-label services for the past 10 years to agencies all over the world. Check out e2msolutions.com/smartagency and get 10% off for the first three months of service.

How to Be the Beneficiary of Your Own Hard Work

Prior to starting his agency, Ryan had freelanced and worked at several good agencies as a creative, so he knew the industry. At some point though, he felt he had to at least try to have the American dream of owning his own business. This way he would be the benefactor of the hard work he’d been putting in. Additionally, at that point his career was about smaller goals like selling ad campaigns, being a Creative Director, and becoming a CEO. It seemed all those goals were leading to him wanting to own the business that generates the ideas.

Initially, Ryan had a business partner who specialized in strategy. They figured a strategist and a creative would make a great agency partnership. However, it wasn’t as successful as they’d thought because they didn’t create a pipeline based on their specialties. Instead, it felt like they were running two separate businesses under the same name. This wasn’t the vision he had for his agency and he wasn’t able to do the things he enjoyed and is good at. He realized he needed to give it a try on his own.

An Unclear Vision Leads to a Lack of Direction

The first couple of years after starting the agency Ryan had no real vision. When you go into a market you should have a clear message, target audience, and specific offer. Ryan didn’t have any of this and just jumped in knowing he is good at advertising.

He realized in order to build the agency he wanted, he needed processes, pipelines, and people that would bring his vision to life. The first step was clearly defining the vision, followed by communicating that vision to everyone in the agency. He found that communicating the vision led to attracting the right people for his team.

He’s made a lot of progress since taking that first step. However, as the owner, he still felt he was constantly making adjustments and imprisoned by the agency.

Defining lack of direction. Making so much progress but still feeling trapped in the business is a sign of a lack of direction. For Ryan, having a lack of direction felt like the agency was running him. He had no way to identify what was going right or wrong and had no clarity on all the moving parts. If you don’t know what’s going wrong, what to do to improve it, and how to measure it, you don’t have a clear vision. Good or bad, you should know why certain things at happening at your agency.

2 Ways to Stop Being the Problem Solver and Empower Your Team

A lot of agency owners make the mistake of solving their team's problems rather than empowering them to make decisions. To prevent this, start showing your team how to be more proactive in looking for solutions. For instance, Jason recommends using the 1-3-1 rule. That is, when an employee comes to you with a problem, they should prepare three possible solutions and the one option they like best.  Practicing this enough will help them learn they already know the right answer and they can stop coming to you for it.

The Socratic Method. Ryan uses this method which basically consists of asking questions. The idea is that, through these questions, you can guide someone to see they already know the answer. It's a way of walking them toward it on their own rather than providing it for them. For this method, you have to fight the instinct to just give your team the solution.

Once you empower your team, you’ll be free to start acting as the agency’s CEO and exit the day-to-day operations.

Where to Find Support to Help Overcome Hard Times

After ten years of being an agency owner, Ryan admits some things are just now becoming clear. It’s definitely not been a linear journey. In fact, this year has been difficult so far with things that were working very well last year but no longer work anymore.

So what is he doing to get through rough patches? Speaking with other CEOs has helped him feel reassured. Joining an entrepreneur group provides reassurance that you’re not the only one struggling. It can also provide you with different perspectives on ways to attack the problem.

Plus, these are conversations you wouldn’t be able to have with other executives at the agency. It also helps Ryan feel even more committed to his decision of becoming an entrepreneur. He could go back to working for somebody else but despite tough times, entrepreneurship is what he really wants.

2 Strategies to Get Your Agency Through a Rough Patch

Owning an agency and dealing with all the unpredictability can be all-consuming and overwhelming. However, Ryan advises that when you find yourself in a rough patch in your agency journey, take your time before making a big decision. It’s important to step back, take a breath, and assess instead of overreacting. This allows you to create a strategy and feel confident executing it. Outcomes are never guaranteed, but having a plan gives you a much better chance of success.  And being proactive is better than just waiting for things to turn around.

Another good way to get through tough times is to ask yourself if your agency is bought tomorrow, what would the buyer change? That’s what you should be focusing on. Agency owners are often reactive to the concerns of the moment and forget to be proactive to get ahead. Growth and challenges come in phases that are often unpredictable but resourceful people will always figure it out.

Do You Want to Transform Your Agency from a Liability to an Asset?

If you want to be around amazing agency owners that can see what you may not be able to see and help you grow your agency, go to Agency Mastery 360.  Our agency growth program helps you take a 360-degree view of your agency and gain mastery of the 3 pillar systems (attract, convert, scale) so you can create predictability, wealth, and freedom.