If you’re an agency owner who is worried about money and the year ahead, don’t forget about the various ways you can improve your margins and revenue through more effective internal processes and efficiencies.
Here are 10 examples of actions you can take in the next 3-6 months:
1. Make processes repeatable: Teams will waste time and money and get stressed if they have to make these up constantly. Map out repeatable steps, assign responsibilities, and formalise them.
2. Understand the true cost of your work: Formalising processes and workflow will enable you to see the true cost of them, so that you can charge for ALL work moving forward.
3. Understand why you give work away for free: Look at patterns of overservicing, give guidance to your teams, map out why you’re giving work for free, and address the issue. Charge for all work. Don’t give in to client requests for additional free work.
4. Monitor and know your numbers: Focus on profit margins per service/client/department, investigate low margins, address them.
5. Increase rates: When is the last time you did this? Did you increase in line with inflation? Read about how to have pricing conversations with existing and new clients.
6. Optimise your pitch process: Give yourself maximum chances of closing leads, review your pitch process, get an outside view on it.
7. Ask existing clients for referrals: Speak to your happy clients and ask to get introduced to their contacts, introduce a formal referral programme.
8. Improve project management: review how you project manage work, define workflow, define roles & responsibilities, get a project management tool.
9. Charge for client services: price client meetings, calls, strategy reviews etc. into your contracts (seems obvious, but doesn’t always happen)
10. Charge for onboarding: Because why wouldn’t you???
There’s a lot of anxiety about the current climate, but there are also MANY ways to save money and work more efficiently.
You will know by now that I love efficiencies and processes ( 🥨 German). I run workshops to uncover your profitability blockers and clunky processes and help you to improve them long-term. Send me a message to freia@be-reyt.com to have a (free) chat and let’s geek out about ways to save money 🤓 .
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