Becoming a million-dollar-revenue agency is a dream that many of us want to achieve. It would mean that all your efforts put you on the right track for success and that more doors can soon open to your business.
However, we need to also remind ourselves that this is a time when new agencies keep popping up in the marketing space — from SEO to social media, and from those specializing in specific industries to full-service agencies. It is a moment when the competition is pretty big and may leave clients disoriented in their process to select the right partner. With this panorama in front of us, the question is: How can agencies set themselves up for growth?
First of all, what does growth mean? Most agencies think growth refers only to the ability to add more clients and more important accounts to their portfolio. But this doesn’t consider the cost of acquisition of new clients, not to mention the need for a bigger team. For others, growth might mean focusing on long-term work to build stronger awareness and be able to predict and anticipate trends or even create them.
What I’ve learned from my experience is that, in addition to staying focused on building success for clients and being consistent in the quality you provide, to successfully grow your agency, you need to work on five main pillars:
1. Design an effective sales process.
Think about what usually happens without a structured sales process. You may perceive any business opportunity as essential for the financial health of the agency and take it on, even if at the end of the day it is more expensive than the revenue it brings in. This can happen when your sales team doesn’t have appropriate guidelines to work with. But if you design a process to support them in researching quality leads, you will be able to save time and money, allow your sales team to work strategically and more effectively, and potentially increase clients’ loyalty.
