🔥 This Week’s Agency Insight

From Jordan Ross @ 8 Figure Agency

December, 3rd 2023

Weekly Insight

I could have made an extra $2,000,000 this year if I knew what I know now 

Here are the top 8 lessons that I had truly implemented at the start of this year, I would have made an added $2,000,000

Read this to add that revenue to your business next year

1- Expectations are the biggest reason clients churn

It continues to blow my mind, but most clients don't actually remember:

• Your specific offer details

• Your onboarding timeline

• Your value to their business

• Your anticipated results and why

And more

To combat the unconscious mind, we have introduced a series of videos to our new clients to educate them on expectations going into and continuing with the 8F experience

When we do this well, our clients are primed to stay with us longer due to them consciously knowing we solve SO many of their problems, continually provide ROI, and help them avoid F-ups

2- It’s easy to build to 2M, it takes a lot to get to 5M

There are levels to this game

Getting your customer success process to work for you to get your business to 2M is easy

Building it to get to 5M takes time

Here are some items I have learned we could have done better at the start of this year

• Improved software- we are building a portal to update our client UI. Building this takes time to customize to our client and business needs

• Better decks, better templates

The clarity the correct deck or template provides to a client at a moment's notice should not be undervalued, especially for consultancies. We have been building these up to an elite level since February…but this is taking time

• Psychology

There are so many ways to dive into this for customer success

How your account managers celebrate wins

How you introduce the right educational video at the right moment

How you add extra, unexpected value to bring the perception of your service to a whole new level

Building all of this at a level that takes you to 5M-10M takes 12-18 months minimum 

3-It’s not what they do, it’s what they aren’t doing that leads to churn

This was a BIG one I saw in my business and in my clients' businesses

For many months, we had clients coming in, getting their problems solved, and leaving before they should have (in my opinion)

The feedback was GREAT too. All these clients were beaming, some even said it was “the best investment I've ever made”

So, why would they leave the collab?

It took me a while to see this, it wasn't what we were doing, it was what we were doing

When I studied the consultants who naturally had longer LTVs than one consultant that had a shorter LTV, I realized the longer ones were sending small signals every client call to increase partnership length

“Imagine in 12 months what the business will look like with our collab”

” This is an amazing win, congrats. We're going to continue to compound these…do you see the value here?”

So many more of these small instances

Our best consultants (And for you, account managers) naturally tied what we were doing to the long term. They continually reinforced our values and ensured they received affirmation from the client.

The combo of several linguistic patterns adding up over time, affirming our value, tying what we do to the long term, and enabling clients to see the value in a long-term partnership

If you aren't training your AMs on this…don't wait. Start this now

4-Auto bill first of the month

Going into 2023, we had flexible billing that would not auto-renew monthly. I realized this summer my desire to build flexibility into billing actually was hurting our service

This undermined:

• The value we provide daily in Slack channels partnering with clients

• The value offered and received during weekly group calls

• The need for consistent accountability and growth

When we implemented this, clients grew faster and our MRR increased instantly

Also, shout out to MARKETING MAX

He gave me the tip to auto bill on the first of each month so you know how much revenue you will generate at a minimum at the start

5-The difference between A talent and B talent is 3X

Going into 2023, I knew the A-level talent made a big difference

I didn't FULLY know the difference it would make in LTV

I saw this for both our clients and our consultants

A talent has, usually, a 3x LTV compared to B talents that are running and managing accounts

If you are considering not paying elite talent that extra salary….pay

You’ll make up for it with client retention

6- Don’t hire FT labor expecting growth will come

This one burned me this year

We just had to let go of someone on the team in a back-end tech position for a department we ended up not pursuing

In December of last year, I made the decision to build an in-house Airtable division

I thought this would add SO much value to clients so it would be worth the distraction

I was wrong

It created TOO big of a distraction to my internal tech team, taking them away from improving our business

I hired FT talent expecting this department to skyrocket

And then kept the W2 employee longer than I needed due to ‘making a role’

Never hire in advance when you can hire PT or contracted labor

This will mitigate this mistake

Footnote: We now refer this to a vendor at the same price that we sold it for (70% cheaper than market)

7- Ghostwriters are great for those who don’t want to write content, but not for me

I think 95% of all founders can leverage ghostwriters

But no one can write about my content better than me

After investing over 60k in testing these services 

(Making videos, sending them to ghostwriters, seeing what they do) and having our lead gen go down…I realized I had to write all my content

If you are like me, write it

If you don’t have the time and don’t want to…delegate it

8- Don't promote into new titles too soon…especially before 5M

I saw this in several clients this year…and even did it in my own business

If you have a great project manager that deserves some form of a promotion, but you don’t have a title to promote them into, do not make an executive title or senior title for them

This:

• Hurts you in the future when the business outgrows the title

• Causes complications down the road when you bring in someone at or above their level who they need to report to

It’s better to move a high performer from “level 1” to “level 2”

Example:

Ops manager 1

Ops manager 2

You can do this all the way up to ops Manager 5

Each level can have specific goals & KPIs that make the role defined by results

This will prevent headaches and egos from flaring up down the road…I promise 

9- Trust but verify

I learned this at Amazon

I teach this in my business

And I had to learn it again

Everyone at every level will eventually reduce their performance unless they are audited continuously

I stopped auditing a sales professional after he had been selling for 8F for close to a year

His results slowly went down, but not fast enough to elicit me to audit

When I finally dove in, this rep had gone off-script by a lot

He wasn't following a lot of the basics which caused a major opportunity cost on the 100+ prospects he had spoken to

Even if you are constrained on time

Even if you have more important ‘priorities’ and think you have the best talent in the world

Audit, review, audit, review

It will prevent marginal decreases in performance month over month

All of this may seem simple, but due to Solomon’s paradox, a psychological principle that says we cannot see and solve our problems as clearly as someone else can, I had to learn these firsthand

This is why I constantly have 1-5 consultants on payroll to help me grow faster

Need help going into 2024? Click here to schedule a meeting and we can set up a consultation where I can identify your issues and the easy solutions to scale going into 2024

Killer Content (My favorite pieces of content from last week):

• Podcast: Ultimate: How Cole Ruud Johnson Added $63,000 MRR in 4 months To His Multi 7 Figure Agency

• Long Form Youtube: How This Performance Marketing Agency Grew By 30k/Month In 90 Days

• Short Form Youtube: Can You Truly Exit and Never Work Again?

Stay Happy

Stay Hungry,

Jordan Ross

CEO & Founder @ 8 Figure Agency

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