Ulrika Viberg
Welcome everyone to this very special webinar. The first one in a series of six with Chris Simmance. Chris. We are talking about something very specific, but then you’re going to introduce it later on a bit because we are going to let people join first, so we’re going to save a few minutes for last minute. People coming to come. In and to join us to hear everything about all. Of this and I’m going. To put away my phone. So it doesn’t vibrate.
I’ve I I have this ritual where I put everything on silent and do not disturb. And then I remember, what if someone’s trying to get hold of me because of this something related to the webinar. So then I put my phone near. Me and then I’m like, no. That’s gonna be buzz on the desk.
Ulrika Viberg
Yeah, yeah. The buzz on the desk. Exactly that. So everyone who is here watching us Live Today, could you please just tell us where you’re from?
Chris Simmance
That’s it. That’s it.
Ulrika Viberg
Because it kind of feels lonely for for me and Chris to just sit here and talk. To each other. We enjoy that though as well. But so, but please, please tell us where. Are you watching us? It’s also nice to. To see who you are, it’s cetera.
Chris Simmance
It’s got. It’s got, it’s nice to uh, it’s nice to see you in. Uh in sunny slash, not dark Sweden as well.
Ulrika Viberg
I like that too. I like Sweden. At the moment, yeah. It’s very sunny, so the sun does not. Really set at the moment.
Chris Simmance
That’s kind of weird, right? You. So you go to bed. In the light as well.
Speaker
Yep, Yep.
Ulrika Viberg
You get the.
Chris Simmance
Parker all the way over in.
Ulrika Viberg
Vancouver. Ohh. Fantastic. Hello Canada. Yeah. Ohh Utah, Cool and Brooklyn that is.
Speaker
Wow, we got.
Ulrika Viberg
Weston, everybody.
Chris Simmance
Hopefully you in you can you can cope over there and and from all the way over in the the North American continent with the with the Swede accent and the British accent for this. Entire weather you go.
Ulrika Viberg
Apologies for my kind of crude sweet action accent in. In my head it’s American and then I hear myself on a recording and I’m like ohh wow. OK that is.
Chris Simmance
I mean, I like the sound of my voice. That I hear. Then I hear my voice back and I and no, it’s not.
Ulrika Viberg
Exactly that, in fact, that.
Chris Simmance
And you hear of your. Your own voice recording on a like a voice note. Or something. For Lanka, crikey, that’s a long way away.
Ulrika Viberg
Yes. Oh, welcome. So for you, who hasn’t met Chris before, and we’re gonna, I’m gonna introduce him properly. OK. But Chris is a geek, and when it comes to techies gadgets, what’s your latest? What’s your? Latest techie gadget Chris.
Chris Simmance
OK so. I’m I I love this. So just one more second.
Ulrika Viberg
He he really loves this.
Chris Simmance
And do the webinar like this.
Ulrika Viberg
Oh my God. They are so cool.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, all the slides are here somehow got turned. But you know, it’s pretty good.
Ulrika Viberg
Yeah, that’s good. I need to. I need to get these as well.
Chris Simmance
That the latest, that’s that’s. I mean, every time I buy a new thing that’s I mean none of. These things are expensive. A cheap and every time. I spend any money like this. It’s one more thing that’s definitely gonna go on the divorce filings in the future. We can eat once because you bought this thing.
Ulrika Viberg
No, that’s not never going to happen, you know. So before we kick off and I’ll introduce it properly, I just want to. Say thank you. To do that, for letting us do this. And yeah, so Anton is on vacation right now and we. Have we have Phillipe to help us so? We are all like we.
Chris Simmance
You’re going to be if you’re watching this, going to be naughty.
Ulrika Viberg
No, we’re going to. Be good. We’re going to behave anyways. So OK, let’s let’s kick this off. So I am Erika viberg. I’m an agency owner and here in Sweden, I run an SEO agency called Unicorn. Yeah, I’ve been doing that for a. Couple of years. And we’re in a decent size. We actually have help from one of the best agency accelerators in the in the world. I will say I don’t know. I I only had tried one so. I don’t know, I don’t it.
Chris Simmance
Who’s that?
Ulrika Viberg
Might be actually the one and only Chris Simmons have here. Who is the? Founder of the OG Centre, also called agency accelerator.
Speaker
That’s it.
Ulrika Viberg
I think that is a hard thing. For me to say that’s sweet.
Chris Simmance
Well, you did it very well.
Ulrika Viberg
- Thank you. So Chris has over a decade of leadership experience in digital marketing and agency advisory and he has his whole own skills in crafting semi bespoke acceleration programmes specifically designed to turbocharge your agency growth and his focus. The simple yet profound, and you will read about them later on to help agency leaders to get more money, more time, less stress, more quickly. I like the sound of that.
Speaker
Yeah, I do.
Ulrika Viberg
So we have been talking a lot about these things, but please and like the audience about your knowledge.
Chris Simmance
Let’s let’s see how you feel after. After a good few slides. Yeah. So, as Arika said, I’m. I’m Chris Mance, the founder of the OG Centre. We are an accelerator for digital agencies, essentially helping you get like already said, more time, more money, less stress and more quickly. It’s essentially de risking that growth with a proper plan that’s helped along by accountable processes building the right leadership structures and systems. And getting kind of that mentorship advice at the right time as and when it when you need it or Ricky, you know everyone. Who’s in in? In here knows I I know from running. An agency or. Two at the same time, which was crazy. And I know for a fact that there are things that pop up in the process of growing your agency, which sometimes you just kind of. Wish that you had someone to ask. Hey, is that right? Or I’m planning to do this and part of the the accelerator to derisk kind of decision making is to is is to have someone to talk to. So you’re more than welcome to reach out on LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on after here. If you’ve got any questions more than happy to help. That’s me, I think. Yeah, Enrique, though you did a terrible introduction to yourself. Because you are an agency owner and you are in Sweden and you do have an agency called Unicorn. However, you have a team of incredible unicorns and every single one of you are ridiculously clever at all of. The things you. Do and I know for a fact because I’ve worked with you. How much? Energy you bring to this industry, you do and and and and. And I think that running a boutique agency. Is arguably harder than trying to grow like a giant agency with hundreds of staff because there’s when you’re really good, you have lots of people coming to you all the time to to want to work with and you. Have to say. No, quite a. Lot and I know that you do. Yeah, so. That’s a better intro for you next time.
Ulrika Viberg
OK, but I’m from Sweden. We don’t, you know, do that. We don’t know. We don’t know.
Speaker
No, I mean.
Ulrika Viberg
How to?
Chris Simmance
I’m known for my modesty. Obviously that’s why I have you indeed. Yeah, exactly. And are we good to get on? With the show, are we?
Ulrika Viberg
Yes, please do please. Start I think that.
Speaker
Well ohh look.
Ulrika Viberg
Without further ado.
Chris Simmance
I didn’t press any buttons but they came up magic guys. And so today we’re gonna talk about some of the top tactics to build a foundation. For your digital agency. Uh, none. Of this is is something that I’m there’s lots of stuff which is gonna sound a little bit like repetition, but it’s basically to push that that mindset of consistent. I’ve got this kind of overriding sensation that the majority of success comes from consistently doing stuff. Well, you don’t have to be the best at everything, but if you’re consistently good at something, the results will come in and the value will will show. We’re going to talk about. People based things we’re gonna talk about, management based things. We’re gonna talk about planning and strategic. We can talk a bit a little. Bit about balancing things so. What I’m gonna do is I’m going. To talk about. How some of these things will affect the foundations of your agency and a few tips or a? Few things to. Avoid as we go through. And I know that, you know, there’s the, the the chat there. So always ask any questions. And I’m sure that they’re good ones and they’re nice, nice, friendly questions. Will be put up on the screen. And Ulrika will shout at me and interrupt me the whole way through with cool things to to take me off topic and and and crazy stuff like. So hello, this is me. I told you earlier. I’m very modest, so there’s definitely loads of pictures of me throughout this entire webinar. I accelerate the agents, accelerate the growth of agencies. I’ve got two really cool helpers there. They are. They say hello to I’m afraid they can’t come on webinars mainly because they can’t talk. Also, because they’d be a massive nuisance and very loud, especially if the doorbell goes and I learned that the other week, the sound does travel through most of the soundproofing in this house. So let’s build a solid a foundation for an agency as we can today. Agencies boiled down to 1 fundamental thing. They are a people business. People buy your services, people deliver your services and people buy from. The people who. Receive your services. The people that buy your services need to understand what you’re delivering. The people who deliver your services need to understand their people. They’re delivering it for otherwise the people who buy from those people will not understand or be able to buy those things. So people buying your services, I love this phrase. I can never remember where I first heard it, but a confused mind doesn’t buy and I think I’ve said this a million times a week.
Ulrika Viberg
It’s it’s brilliant.
Chris Simmance
It it just. Underpins the fact that we always overcomplicate things to a point where you get nods in a room, nods in a meeting, and then. Something, somewhere doesn’t doesn’t take off. That might well be in pitches. You might lose a pitch because you’ve over engineered it, or you’ve made it too complex. You haven’t, like, necessarily got down to the kernel of of of what it is that some. Want you might be confused as to as to, uh, the the way that you explain your services you might think, OK, we’ve got this really niche way of delivering something, but the way you explain it actually ends up essentially devaluing the way that the that a client understands it and sees it. The problem that with most agencies and I think almost every agency that has ever started, has had this problem and that it is that we need to make sure that when you’re building a foundation for an agency, you only sell what you can deliver. That sounds really. This I’m not saying stuff like things you buy from freelancers or things that you have over as SAS solutions. I’m saying if you’re really good at digital marketing and SEO only do SEO, don’t offer e-mail services. If you are a web developer and you’re building great doodle websites, only build great doodle websites. Don’t try and deliver something that you can’t sell because you will not be able to convert those people very well and often because you don’t know that service so well. You take the money and you lose the client. It ends up causing some problems to only sell what you can deliver. The the problem with this often comes in early doors and the foundational aspect of this that I wish I could could go back in time and speak to every agency owner when. They first starting. I did this and it hurt me. It’s trying to be all things to all people, but it ends up giving everyone a big headache. So I’m talking about. If your agency website says we do. All digital marketing services for every sector in every industry, and you’ve got sectors page and you’ve got 15 services that you deliver unless you’re an agency of 200 staff with different departments which are. Essentially, mini age. It’s very, very difficult to not make that complexity cause problems for you. So from a foundational level, keep things as simple as you can in terms of the way you explain them. The way that you sell them only sell what you can actually deliver and don’t do stuff just for the sake of trying to be everything. If a client comes to you and says, hey, can you do? E-mail. Well yes, I’ve got a MailChimp account, and yes, I’ve used it once in my life or whatever. It doesn’t mean you should be selling the service. You probably won’t lose the client by saying no, but you’ll definitely lose the client if you say. Yes. And then you don’t deliver it very well. Yeah, so not, uh, essentially, all three of the people buying your services fundamentals at the foundational level, not being clear about what you’re selling may get the client over the line, but expectations will be wrong and then you’ll lose the client. And that is more expensive than keeping the client because you’ve. It’s cost you money to get there. Don’t deliver or deliver differently than what you said. And again, expectation management, but also if you’re trying to sell services or deliver services which you can’t offer or you don’t have control over, or you don’t understand fully, the client will eventually find that out or you will eventually find it out because the client will churn. And if you offer everything, it creates complexity. How many times in anyones industry have you ever seen? The PPC account perfectly matched up with the SEO account, which perfectly matches up the web development on the site, all at the exact same time. Internally, that’s a lot of complexity. You then adding complexity with the clients and the market and the industry and changes in Google and changes on in web and it causes client change because complexity is something that you can’t control. If you deliver everything. For everyone. So that’s people buying your services. The fundamental piece here. Is keep it simple. People who deliver your services similarly are confused. Mind doesn’t buy now when you have a team, regardless of how senior or junior they are, they need to know who they are, what they’re doing, and what you expect from them and what is what they should expect from you if you’re deliver. If they don’t fully understand what they are accountable for delivering in your agency. You have a mismatch of expectations. Either something doesn’t get delivered to a client, or more gets delivered to a client for the from a. From a perspective of you over service and that costs the margins on the agency. You might have the expectation that I am a landing page developer for PPC campaigns and that’s all I do, and then a request comes in that isn’t for you and you upset the client or you upset internally because you don’t do the work. Vice versa, if you have a team and you don’t make it expectations. There it’s going to. Be difficult. So from this person. Active make it clear what your people are supposed to do. They need to be able to get the job like they need to understand what they’re supposed to do. They have to want. To do the job, so don’t be. Don’t confuse them and they need to. They need to be able to do their job, and if they don’t really know expressly what they’re supposed to do, then it’s very hard. And that means that. You need to have a. Consistency around job specs, job levels and and hierarchies and things like that, and the ways that things are accountably laid out.
Speaker
I mean.
Ulrika Viberg
That that is very very down. To key like what a team does really. Isn’t it or like a team player knowing what I am supposed to do and knowing what my strengths are and that will then turn out in the business and and showing in results to the clients etc etc. And this in the end has a big impact in the agency growth. Doesn’t it?
Chris Simmance
Yeah. I mean, everyone’s hired someone that they kind of regret hiring in the past, and it may well be that they weren’t fit for the agency or they weren’t a fit at the right time. Or they were just not good at what they did. But oftentimes if they didn’t necessarily completely understand what your expectations of them were because they weren’t, they didn’t they they were confused as to exactly where they sat in the agency, their their performance is, is your fault. So fundamental level of foundational level, your first hire through to your. Last ever higher, there needs to be a consistency in how you communicate expectations. And equally on that front, around consistency, there needs to be a consistency in process and a balance in processes. So consistency of process means that the same type of work gets done consistently well. So a client understands what they’re getting, and you can hone your skills and hone. Home the the quality of the delivery, but in. Terms of balance. If you’ve got an absolute expert top of their game, really senior person and you give them a hundred point checklist as a pro. This you’re stopping them from being creative, which you’ve paid them to do. You’ve you’ve stopped them from being great at their job, and they’re just following a checklist. You can’t do that, so you need to. The consistency aspect is to show them what good looks like. This is the quality that we’re expecting to give to the client. This is the the outcome we’re expecting you. Go away now and do it the way that you want as long as the outcome is the same and it costs the same to deliver. If you’ve got juniors or you’ve got lower execs in the team who are learning or who are junior in their career, you need to have a a more rigorous set of processes because you need to also maintain consistency of delivery whilst also balancing against the fact. That they don’t. Have the experience so. When you’re when you’re building your agency, the first thing that you wanna do when you’re hiring people is go, right? I’m gonna build some processes and everyone’s gonna do exactly how I want, and it’s gonna be 30 bullet points, and it’s gonna be in asana or some Google Docs or notion or something like that. You need to. Make sure it’s consistently able to be repeated. Done without you turning your service into a product.
Speaker
And balance.
Ulrika Viberg
Maybe, maybe they’re going to elaborate about this more further on, but how how do you as an agency owner build that culture that nurtures the the creativity and the the ownership and the accountability within the team that?
Chris Simmance
Yeah. And the.
Ulrika Viberg
It actually creates this.
Chris Simmance
The the The the best way that I’ve ever found that this this can be done is by having the team help build the process. The leader of the department or the leader of the business maintains the final decision on is this good enough or does this fit and the the team will set what those rules are so you’ll put the goals at the end of the pitch and they will draw the lines on the on the on the the on on the football pitch for example. Once they’ve drawn the lines, they’re more likely to want to stay within the lines. But you’ve also been able to build a tolerance there for juniors to be able to follow it and and get consistent outcome and seniors to be able to follow it in order to maintain consistent deliverables without hamstringing them. If you manage performance and maintain performance all the time, and again sorry consistently, then you will end up having a team that are generally happy. They will understand when they’ve not done as well. They will also understand when they are doing well. You will get more out of people if you are consistently. Delivering the same kind of tone of voice and the same adherence to standards, people need to know what they should expect from you. So, for example, if I don’t know what my role is, I might leave the. Company. If it’s too complex or too broad as a process, I’m going to get stressed. I’m going to do something wrong. Someone’s gonna shout at me. I might leave the company, and if I’m inconsistently managed or not looked after in the same way you know. Imagine if you if you came home one day and you got shouted that for for one thing and you came home the next day with the exact same scenario and nothing happened. You will feel inconsistent. You won’t know where you stand and you might leave the company. Staff are really expensive, but they’re they like to recruit staff. It is really expensive. They are your biggest asset in an any single agency ever.
Speaker
Oh yeah.
Chris Simmance
If you lose stuff that you’ve invested time in training and building up relationships with clients, it is expensive, so you will lose staff if you inconsistently manage them or you hamstring them in processes or you make it hard for them. To understand. Gets frustrating like that guy. So as a people business. Just remember that happy people deliver their best work and consistently people who are usually people who are usually happier. They often kind of know what you expect from them and you know what? To expect from each other each. But happy people who know where they stand in an agency are happy to deliver work for clients and clients also happy to be treated in a certain way. So that kind of expectation management is hugely essential with agencies and as a fundamental level, you need to know what am I delivering. And am I an expert in that in order to be able to maintain process and consistency and expectations? So something which I struggle to, I struggle with a lot. Agencies struggle with a lot. Everyone struggles with this and it’s because of the intangible aspect. Most delivery from most agencies is a service and not a product. Yet we try and turn them into products by reporting in their consistent way with some spreadsheet and some graphs and we try and turn it into a product by making fifty step accountable processes which essentially. Product and commoditize a deliverable. The problem with that is it loses clients really quick because clients don’t stay just because they’re getting results. I don’t know how many every single person in that’s watching this right now. I have experience of this. I’m sure you’ve got experience this where a client who’s getting great results. Still leaves and because. They aren’t looking, they are looking for results, but they don’t necessarily feel the results. So client management is an absolute art form that you need to get used to. So a proper account. Management processes are just as, if not more, important sometimes than actually delivering great results. The scary thing is you have to ask your clients regularly for feedback and your staff regularly for feedback, because if you don’t know the temperature of your clients, it will be a shock when they leave, even if they’re getting good results and it will feel bad. All of us don’t. All all of us do these jobs because we want to do these jobs. And we don’t like finding out that someone doesn’t like what we’ve done, especially if there’s a big green arrow pointing up and a number that’s bigger than another number. Why can’t we understand that this isn’t fair. I’ve done a really good job here, yet they’re leaving. And they say that it’s not about price. It’s like, well, OK, it’s probably cause they don’t. Feel the result of what you’re doing. So you’re selling something that is invisible if you’re delivering a service, and that’s often things as well from a web dev point of view, that’s often things that are intangible, like maintenance and updates and and little tweaks and maintenance hours and stuff like that as well. As with SEO and PPC. You’re selling something that’s invisible, even though it’s 20. 23. A huge amount of the population of this planet do not see value in pixels. And they don’t understand it. And if they don’t understand it because it’s intangible, make it flip intangible, make it tangible, and we’ll talk about how to do that.
Ulrika Viberg
In a second, but yeah, that is not a small task.
Chris Simmance
No, it isn’t. It’s really hard to to make an intangible thing tangible, but you can do some things. We’ll talk about over in a in. A second. So fundamental foundational things. From client management tips, which you. Can take away straight. Today, regular communication is absolutely essential with clients and it’s not just like their monthly check in or the quarterly review or something along those lines. I’m talking like little mini check-ins once in a while, ad hoc. So what we used to do when we had like 40-50 clients at one point was every client would always have a weekly check. We would check like, you know, rankings. Up or down or whatever else, and but once a month at a random date in the month, one of those clients would be checked and we’d find something interesting to show them. We take a screenshot and we say, hey, Bob, just looking at the site today and spotted this really cool thing and Bob didn’t know that it was actually standardised and it was over and it was timed and that person was doing it intent. Actually, Bob thought, wow, they’re actually. Working on my site I. Wasn’t even thinking about that for the day. This is great. Regular communication makes them feel special. Special people don’t look for problems in in intangible things if they’re not looking for value because they feel it, then they’re not going to leave because they don’t understand the value. You have to make. Clients feel special and I’m not saying lick their boots or take them to dinner every six months. What I’m saying is things like listening on a call and a proper client manager will listen on the call and. Yeah, uh oh, we went out for a new. When you doing the preamble at the beginning of the call? Oh yeah, we went out for my wife’ll. My wife and I, we had our wedding anniversary this weekend as we went out to to dinner. And you said, oh, that’s lovely. Happy anniversary, et cetera. Write it down the following year. You say to the same person around that period. Have a lovely anniversary. Hope you have a happy anniversary or something, or birthdays or those sorts of things. If you make them feel special because they are things not connected to the thing you deliver, they believe that you have their interests in mind and you probably do because you know it’s very hard to fake these kinds of things. But as a good client manager and a good account manager, you will remember milestones we used to do like a 100 days of love. It was really no, I’m a marketing guy, so 100 days of love. So day 30 rather than just having to pay their invoice, they got like a box of chocolates. Come through the post that says we really enjoy working with you. Day six we. Day 60, we we. We we’d send a a thing in the post again and Day 90 would be 3 months in and they come for their QBR meeting. We’d either go to them or the other way round and we would bring cupcakes or we do some. Thing that makes them feel a bit special and doing stuff like that like this is secret sauce here guys. If you go to your clients get online, you can find them all over the world. Those little rice paper things that you that go on top of cakes somewhere in every country is a company which puts branded logos on them. Buy as many as you can and every time you go and see a client, take a box of cupcakes which you buy from the shop. Put the the logos on the top, give them to the client, keep them sealed and when you leave the office they’ll open them. All up and they. Go. Oh my God, this is amazing. They’ll tweet about it, they’ll share it, they’ll share them with other teams that then keeps. You in good graces. And then so when results aren’t so good. They don’t go ohh no these guys. Are rubbish. You make them feel special. Making your work tangible. As we said a minute ago, it’s bloody hard. It’s really hard so. You connect things that mean things to them. Versus the results. So instead of saying you’ve had 1000 more sessions to your site this month, you say 1000 more sessions means 50 more buying people. Buying widgets rather than just saying 50 people have bought more widgets this. You say 50 more widgets sold means your cost per acquisition is lower. Would you like us to be able to spend a bit more cash on? On this next month or you mentioned the other week that you were looking to hire a head of XYZ because of the results. This month it looks like that role is going to be able to be filled much more cheaply, or something like that. You connect it to something they actually understand because they are not coming to you to build a website to do. ABC’s do. SEO or e-mail or any of those things because they understand it fully. They understand it enough to know. They need some. Support, but they don’t understand the numbers and what we have as a problem in this industry is we send big old PDFs with loads of graphs and loads of numbers and a single paragraph that says. This month this went up, which is great. You’ve gotta say it went up because and we intend to do this afterwards and you create a nice like a nice story. Around it so.
Ulrika Viberg
I mean, all this kind of for me sounds like don’t look from far away. Don’t do the work on your on your office. Come to the client, show that you’re they’re special, that we care about you and your work and your success.
Chris Simmance
That’s it.
Ulrika Viberg
And then we’re. Going to work, doing that with you. I love that.
Chris Simmance
Then then they’re they. When when times are tough, every business. Will always look for a place to. Cut costs. If you are an. Essential part of their business. Yes, they will not try and cut costs, especially if they understand what you’re delivering value. If they don’t understand the value, they’ll you’re just another cost line in their in their profit and loss statements. Yeah. So if you can make it tangible, the stuff we do affects change elsewhere in the business then that’s that’s what you. Need to do. The hard, scary thing and a good uh good friend of ours. OMG one of our advisors who’s all she talks about is this in a good way is get feedback. Feedback is your friend. It’s scary though, because you’re essentially kind of asking your partner do I? Do I look good in this dress? Kind of thing. And and it. There there’s some. Easy, simple ways to do this. Don’t let feedback with the client or internally be a surprise. Don’t let it be a surprise. You onboard the client and you say at month 3 when you set, when you get your report, you’re also gonna get a link to a Net Promoter score survey or to a a survey about the services so they know they’re getting it. They don’t feel like they have to complete it. But they can, if they want to, and equally, and if it’s not a surprise, that if they know it’s coming, then you don’t feel so bad. Cindy.
Ulrika Viberg
Steph. Yes, it’s more like a process, isn’t.
Speaker
Then it sounds simple.
Chris Simmance
It actually take the take that like feeling that you’re asking for. You know, I I remember thinking, you know, send a send a feedback service that’s an invite for someone to find a problem. Often it isn’t. Yes, more people will write a complaint than they will write praise. But if you’re making a profit making a process. Out of it. That’s fine.
Speaker
Share the results.
Chris Simmance
Of all of these things internally, because then your team will know you’re invested in improving things, you’re invested in stuff. You share the results of. Your survey without manipulating it and the. Team Will will trust you. Obviously, where you can anonymized things so it doesn’t make it look like a member of the team isn’t performing or department isn’t performing as well. You anonymise it and aggregate things, so you’d say our Net Promoter score is 38% or 38 out of 100 or something like. And we need to do these things in order to solve. That and then you share those outcomes externally, so you will share, you will say to clients. Thanks very much for the feedback this quarter. The Net Promoter score was 38. It was 39 last time. We’re working on some stuff. Here is the list of things we’re gonna do to improve that. Thank you for your custom. The cool thing? Is sharing outcomes internally and externally. Allows helps you retain clients more than believe it or not ask not asking them for feedback. If you’ve got great scores from surveys, you can use them in marketing. You can say we’ve got a great Net Promoter score or you can say 9 out of 10 customers would would recommend us. All of those things and will be great outcomes of doing the scary thing and saying, do you love me and. And and and you’ll feel you know. You’ll feel great when you get these results, and especially if you say to. Client, thanks so much for the for the honest feedback. That’s really helped person in this team improve something and actually in a training course and now I’m really happy about something that they were formally nervous about. And it’s it just makes people feel brilliant.
Ulrika Viberg
Ohh yes, of course used to it.
Chris Simmance
Client management is the thing that protects you when the results aren’t as good. If the results are great and client management is not great, you’ll still lose your client. So trying to make some of these invisible things look a bit more visible. Result tie the results that you have to tangible things. So like I said earlier, the impact of doing this is related to the thing that’s in your business that you definitely can see or feel feel or hear and if you report impacts and not just numbers, they will understand their reports better if I see. One more agency report that says that’s a massive what’s it called now? Like a studio thing that’s just loads of numbers. That’s why your clients. That’s why you chain clients because you just. Give them the that. Looks fancy, but it’s loaded numbers and it’s meaningless if you report that the numbers have XYZ impact, they get it. They want it, they’ll they’ll understand it, they’ll ask where their report is. If you talk. About the plans and strategies that you have related to results and things like that in a story format, they’ll understand that people were innately connected and to stories. So this year, it’s now the summer season, which means children are off school. You run a B to B. Business the results are your visibility is much higher. However, the traffic is lower not because of seasonality, but because seasonality. The but you can then tie this to a tangible thing and say however, traffic is actually higher year over year than it was last year because visibility has reduced the impact of lower traffic at this time of the year, which actually means you’ve got more leads in your pipeline this quarter. By going into Christmas, everyone’s likely to get their bonus, customer, client, etcetera.
Ulrika Viberg
That is fantastic. I really like that as well. Not just also, not just reporting on the numbers, even though you have a story about that telling about the report and everything, but tell why isn’t important, what’s the impact for you and what does it mean, etcetera, that’s.
Chris Simmance
Exactly it it it’s it’s so if you tie things together and you have a thread and this all kind of boils down to people at business, again if you care about the results of a client then it’s not numbers you need to report. It’s the thing that makes them have the impact. That allows them to. Clients again, clients don’t normally leave you because of performance. They often leave because they don’t feel, feel, value or well, go with someone that articulates the value of what they do slightly better. So make sure whatever you do at a foundational level of your agency, you make it clear. Tangible, consistent and then clients will say every time you get a new client, you’ll know they’ll stay longer than the previous clients because you’ve made things clear and tangible and it’s consistently so. It’s really not that stressful though, to run an agency if you’ve got a plan for where you’re. Going it’s a stressful business. It’s a real industry, but if. You’ve got a long. Horizon and you know where you’re aiming. For in three five years. Time. It’s a lot less stressful when. You know where you’re going so. If you’re not, if you’re not living. If you know if I know in three years time I’m going to have this many clients, this many staff, this much revenue this much. Profit. I’m going to be delivering these services to this niche industry or this niche service to this many different industries. You don’t end up living in this, not in this important and not urgent box, and that’s that top left. One where it’s usually unplanned and it’s usually very reactive that unplanned very reactive box is the scary box. That’s the box that you wake up on a Sunday night. At 11 PM, 12:00 PM, I’ll get a bit early so. Maybe a bit later for. Not. And that’s the box where you wake up and you go. Oh, no, I’ve got all these things to do tomorrow. Those are the that’s the important and urgent stuff that doesn’t exist as much in an agency. If you have a proper plan that’s well communicated where you normally will live. If you’re a great agency leader and you’ve got the foundations right as you grow. The processes will help with the stress and the workload you live in that not urgent but important box. Everything that is in the urgent and not important box is used. Relatively small reactive stuff like someones on holiday and someone has to do something so you delegate things out to people who know what they’re doing cause you’ve managed expectations. And if you know where you’re going when any pressure comes up and you still know where you’re going, you’re a better leader. Better leaders are not full of emotional energy. That is usually not that helpful to people. I found that I was a terrible leader when I was running my agency. When I was stressed and I was stressed, usually because I. Didn’t know where. I was going because I didn’t have a plan. I thought I was just gonna make loads of cash. Cash flow looked great, but then something comes along, slaps you in the face and you immediately take it out on everyone else for some reason, which is totally unfair. That being said, they probably did something. Wrong doesn’t. Matter, of course. Should have done these things if you. Were a good leader, you don’t buckle under the pressure because you know where you’re going and you know the impact of the. Thing that’s giving you the pressure. Your people will buy into that vision of the future. So if you know where. You’re going and you are good enough and calm enough and consistent enough and you manage expectations properly and you remember that people buy from people and that they shouldn’t be confused as to what they’re doing. They will buy into that vision and they will stay with you longer. Not just clients but staff. They will be there for the long haul. Because they can see a progression plan for them in the in the agency, they can see where they’re aiming for, where you’re aiming for and how that aligns to. Then the key thing from a foundational fundamental level in an agency, then therefore is to make sure that you have a shared set of values. And I’m not saying dictate them with the team, you. Need to spend. A proper process you guys went through a Unicorn and I remember. Essentially, you came out of that and you were like we already knew this, but we’ve actually now just articulated it and. Everyone knows that we all agree.
Ulrika Viberg
Yeah, that was a fantastic feeling. Actually. That was really, really good because what you are teaching us or what you are telling us or coaching us with, it’s it’s nothing.
Speaker
These things. You’re like weeks.
Ulrika Viberg
It’s nothing coming from the space. Like, OK, this is totally alien. We’ve never heard about this. We don’t understand anything. It’s like. OK, of course of. Course it’s like this. We just didn’t know how to do it or how how to to make it our own. So you need help with that.
Chris Simmance
Exactly, exactly that and and. The If if you if you have a shared common set of values, everyone has different values, they’re from different. Places with different experiences. Yeah, but if you have a shared core set of values that everyone has come come up with themselves as a team and everyone kind of agrees to. That means that when you share your vision for the future, they don’t immediately think this person just wants to get rich and work off of our backs and our our. Labour. Yeah. And what they do think is I can see where I’m going inside this organisation and I know they’re here with me for me.
Ulrika Viberg
Yeah, and that’s important.
Chris Simmance
The long horizon, it’s a lot less stressful because people are much easier to to to lead so. If you have a long horizon, external challenges clients leaving, hopefully not another COVID style type thing. External challenges are a little bit easier. So with a robust plan for the future, it helps to slow things down. And my grandmother used to say to me, less haste, more speed, Christopher, which essentially. Don’t react to stuff so quickly and you’ll get somewhere faster in almost every single agency. Clients pay monthly. Staff get paid monthly bills get paid monthly. Something happens daily. Something happens hourly, but the daily and the hourly stuff only has an impact after amount of time. You don’t have to react. Immediately to everything.
Speaker
Yeah. So if.
Chris Simmance
You’ve got a robust plan for the future in. A year 6. Months three years down the road. Food, something that happens right now, doesn’t need an immediate stressful reaction. You can slow the thinking down and from a a a foundational level. A slower thinking person is usually a clearer thinking person and therefore the that the decisions you make when an external challenge comes along, hell of a lot better outcomes. If you ask when something happens externally, does this impact the plan? If it doesn’t, and it’s a bit like you’re sailing a ship and it’s a 1 degree course correction over 100 miles, that may well mean a large impact at the end because you will not end up where you’re going. If it impacts the plan, slow the thinking down. You can plan what you do. If it doesn’t impact the plan, you put it into the not important not urgent box, which is we don’t need to worry too much about this because this is a a storm whilst we’re on the way there, it doesn’t impact the plan we’re doing. Right. If it does impact the plan, though, you should be able to with the the clarity and the consistent team consistently led team have limited amounts of stress to deal with that and everyone can make clearer decisions, clearer decisions usually better. Longer horizons therefore mean longer lead times on issues. You can either see things coming sooner or you have a longer amount of time to deal with them when they do come as a as a surprise. And which essentially means that you are less stressed running your agency and it’s always going to be stressful regardless. So that’s the that’s the thing, so. I like to. Talk about captains and ships. No idea why. But remember the. Captain of the ship never steers or maintains the ship unless they’re on. Their own, which then a boat. The captain sets the course, monitors progress and manages performance. A happier crew knows that they can trust the direction and the means of travel. They don’t have to be the ones doing all of the. Work and you can lead the the people in the direction that they want to go in because they’ve agreed to the same set of values and the same vision for the future and having a long vision means that the captain can keep in charge of maintaining the progress around things. So keeping all of this in balance is really, really important. So semi parting tips here for a a strong foundation sell less, as in sell less stuff, sell as much of the thing you’re really good at, but deliver it consistently. Consistently good. If you know where you’re going and consistently communicate it well, your clients will understand your team will understand and you will feel better because everyone is following the leader. A leader isn’t a leader because they’re just at the top. A leader has followers, and followers want to follow, not because they have to. Do you measure results against the plan? It’s easy to adjust accordingly if something comes along and you just adjust things, you’re not following a plan. You’re you’re, you’re. Creating stress for yourselves, it’s it’s hard. If you look at what you need in order to get to where you need to go and you’re adjusting the plan accordingly, everything seems to work and everyone’s happy. So a leaders job is to lead. And working in the business and not on it often causes imbalance. If you are delivering services as well as managing people, you then will find it a lot harder to to get that right balance between vision of the future, consistently managing performance and and looking after your team. So the best thing you can do to deliver. Is to do your job. And that’s be. A leader of an agency, if you’re building an. Agency from scratch. And you are the only one in it. Naturally, you will have to work on things as well as in the business and on the business and everything along those lines. But you will not. You will not have to do that forever. So building these foundations is absolutely essential as early as possible because the the. Eventually, these small things which you let go early doors will compound to a point where you in a hamster wheel. Of get client lose client, get staff, lose staff, find client, lose client, get office, lose client and it just goes around and around in circles and then eventually you will either burnout or the business will burn out from a cash flow point of view. Yeah. If there are any questions please let me know, LinkedIn, Twitter, etcetera.
Ulrika Viberg
And you are very happy to answer questions. I know that.
Chris Simmance
Ohh I am I.
Ulrika Viberg
You’re very passionate about this topic.
Chris Simmance
I really am only because one I’ve been there. I’ve done it. It’s caused me untold amounts of stress and pressure and I want to see people succeed and there is, and there are a lot of very good people out there who are just trying to do a good job. And if you follow the the. Basic rules of maintain consistency focus on the future. Building resilience with the plan and consistently communicate tangible value of the work you. Deliver. It’s not being a product. People don’t like. It stops being a place where people just work for money and people love what they do and love what they deliver and everyone’s happy.
Ulrika Viberg
Awesome. Thank you so much. So I don’t have any questions from the audience at this point, but I think that when people are watching this on YouTube replay, please reach out to Chris, if you have any any questions. I’ve I’ve asked. Ohh, we have one question from. So Parker wonders if which of your services have produced the most are? Why for your clients and why and how have you recommend strategic planning for customers with niche markets, I hope. I get that right.
Chris Simmance
And so to to kind of questions together there, so first part. Which of my services? I’m guessing you’re talking about the services of OMG, so call plug for me if it is and. So the vast majority. Of the stuff that we do best is the long term vision planning. The stuff that we did with you guys for. Example or we? Go around the vision, the values, the purpose, the mission and then the strategy means that with inside of six months, any agency knows exactly where it’s going for the next three to five years. And you know the measures of success. Along the way, along that route, there’s lots of leadership challenges and questions to from many point of view. The strategic planning stuff is kind of it’s a lot harder to do and to explain kind of without sort of showing anything here, but we always look at exactly where you are right now from a financial point of view from agencies, scope and scale and everything point of view. And then we look at where you personally want to go in three to five years. And that where you personally want to go needs to be driven usually by the vehicle of your business. So then we create the business purpose behind the personal one and then we tie, we tie all that together. In the thread. Of in three years, you want five years. Want to be here one year? You’re here 20 and the thread along the way is all of the stuff that needs to get done in between. Hopefully that’s nice.
Ulrika Viberg
It was. It was a very nice experience to go through that process actually and it was such a relief to have have the vision, the mission and everything and the plan on paper and.
Speaker
Yeah, I’m not. It’s been.
Chris Simmance
It’s easier to have a when when a bad day in the office happens, but you have a plan and you know kind of, OK, this is just a bad day. That means it’s only one bad day and it doesn’t spiral into like a painful weekend or something like.
Ulrika Viberg
Exactly that actually. So we have one more question. When starting an agency from scratch and without an existing audience of contacts, would you suggest paid social ads to get your initial? Clients. So that is a. A digital marketing question.
Chris Simmance
Yeah. So it it. I hate to give the digital marketing answer. It kind of depends on. What it is that it’s it’s? And so if you start from absolute zero and you have no client base. And you must have something somewhere that shows that you can do what you do, where it might be previous experience at another agency or another business or something like that. So create case studies, create things which prove that you know what you’re doing, do an awful lot of personal brand building, personal brand building when you’re starting any agency is absolutely amazing. To us, at a certain point, you then have to make sure that personal branding isn’t a a ball and chain. You need to make sure your team actually have their own personal. Brands as well, but early, early days, personal branding through show of experience go to events, speak to people, go on webinars, go on podcasts, listen to stuff, engage with your industry and you’ll find that referrals end up coming relatively quickly and paid social paid social works really, really well, though, if your client.
Ulrika Viberg
Yeah, it’s very effective.
Chris Simmance
At the end of it is looking for a transactional service, so it’s e-mail marketing that is automated done. OK, fine. A Facebook ad might work. Or something transactional that is a a technical fix on a website which is very kind of CRM led, but otherwise it’s it’s it’s it’s more difficult to do ads when you have no credibility at the back end, cause if you’re asking for money, you need to be able to prove you can do it.
Ulrika Viberg
So we are actually running out of time, but the questions are still popping in and Anton is on vacation, so.
Chris Simmance
Yeah, Anton, if you’re watching this.
Ulrika Viberg
I guess we continue a bit.
Chris Simmance
Let’s so there’s two quick let’s do these. So the question from Stan and elegant online solutions, yeah once. So what’s Stan saying? Hang on, there we go.
Ulrika Viberg
Step how do you suggest a step by step pricing stair stair step with upsell offers to bring your clients up to the next level and elegant online solution is as freelancers using Duda. How does your advice still apply?
Chris Simmance
Freelancer is I I do elegant first. Because it’s super easy, every single business. The business run it like a business. If you’re running an if you’re running. If you’re a freelancer, run it like an agency, and very quickly you’ll see the profit margins increase. If you’re a freelancer and you run a run, any product or any solution. Or any service. As a single person on your own, then it very quickly becomes a lifestyle business, which essentially means you stop working. You stop getting paid. Run it like an agency. So listen to everything. I just. Said from standpoint stance question. The you need to look at essentially fair market value. For the majority of the services. That you have and that’s market research beginning point, never undercut just to get clients in because it will pay you nothing in the long term. You’ll lose a client and it will have cost you money cause you’ve given discounts and things like. But you make sure that if you need to, if you say I want to make a 20% net profit on every single client, then you price accordingly based on the costs. So you make a 20% net profit as a minimum level, but every single client that comes in as you’re doing your pitch and your and your onboarding, although through to the very beginning of the services. You explain to them the other things which will help them in the long run. So if you drew a a year three-year plan. Your client and you said year one, the thing you bought in year 2, the thing you bought plus this other thing because this thing is actually gonna be perfect to switch on once year one has worked really well or six months or whatever else. So a bit like with feedback, don’t let it be a surprise that you’re. Going to up. Sell to them because they will expect it, because that’s how these things work. But if you make sure it’s. Very clear that we’ll offer. These things, when there’s a tangible good value based reason for it. And we’ve already proven our proven ourself and we’ve made it very clear that we have other things and great.
Ulrika Viberg
Thank you so much and thank you Stan. And and again online solutions as well. So thank you Chris for again enlightening me and giving me so much and all the others in this webinar as well the the knowledge and your tiny bit of your brilliance, your brilliant mind.
Chris Simmance
And you go. What a little bit of brilliance today next. Next webinar I’ll be. Even a little bit. More brilliant.
Ulrika Viberg
Oh, my God, we’re going to shine even more. That’s yes.
Chris Simmance
I thought you always rubbish.
Ulrika Viberg
So before we close this today, I just want to give a shout out because Duda has a Duda con and we have a promo video. That we want to show.
Chris Simmance
You. Ohh awesome. I didn’t have a promo video.
Ulrika Viberg
Ohh, kick off the promo video.
Chris Simmance
We did.
Ulrika Viberg
Wow. And just.
Speaker
It’s going to give.
Ulrika Viberg
You the link I want to go.
Chris Simmance
And I’m in.
Speaker
I mean I.
Chris Simmance
Was on the in, but I’m going. To be in even more that that’s pumped me up that.
Ulrika Viberg
Shut up and take my money. OK. Thank you so much again and thank you Duda for for this, for having us and letting us rant a bit and chat a bit about our, our passion and our businesses and everything. And thank you, Chris again so.
Chris Simmance
Thank you everybody. Thank you everybody. Thank you.
Ulrika Viberg
See you next time.
Chris Simmance
Yes, awesome.