Agency Forward

Unknown Speaker 0:00
Hey, everyone, solocast for you, the agency world spent probably a decade telling you to stop doing execution and move up the value chain, which was great advice at the time, but industry probably over corrected, and now agencies are selling strategy to clients who have zero capacity to actually implement it. And the result, said, a lot of agencies are wondering why retention is so hard. In this episode, we discuss why execution doesn't make you a vendor, and what actually does how to scope and price strategy plus execution without killing your margin, the one question that reveals whether your clients are getting outcomes or just getting advice and more. Lead Gen is the hardest part of running an agency. For most it's unpredictable, it's slow and it's usually expensive. Jia flips that. It's the all in one growth platform that turns your existing relationships and client work into a steady pipeline. Jia automates lead gen follow up and content, and it's all from the work you're already doing. You can check it out and get some free bonuses at get gia.ai/dynamic

Unknown Speaker 1:10
agency and now strategy versus execution.

Unknown Speaker 1:16
It's easier than ever to start an agency, but it's only getting harder to stand out and keep it alive. Join me as we explore the strategies agencies are using today to secure a better tomorrow. This is agency forward.

Unknown Speaker 1:34
There is a piece of advice that's been floating around the agency world, like gospel, right? And you've probably heard it. You've probably even built your like, entire business model around this. If you're at the right time, stop being a pair of hands. Move up the value chain, be a strategic partner, right? That's the advice I get. Where it comes from, because agencies spend decades stuck in this like execution mode, cranking out deliverables or building whatever the client asked for. They're getting treated like a vendor, but with a nicer logo. Right? Margin was terrible. Honestly, the respect that they're getting is probably worse. But the advice to like to move up was a genuine correction, right? It was the right move for a lot of agencies at a very specific moment in time. But here's what happened, right? The entire industry heard that advice and then over corrected, like hard so agencies went from we'll do whatever you need to we'll tell you what you need, and then you can figure out how to do it right. Strategy decks kind of replace deliverables. Through this, we started giving like roadmaps instead of just the results that we were promising, and so for the most part, right? Agencies like started selling the thinking instead of doing, which it sounds great, until you realize that most of your clients, they don't actually have someone doing the work right, like they actually need that support, and that's a problem that I think a lot of people overlook with this advice, that there are agency owners right now charging, you know, 10, 15k a month for strategy, but they're not doing a lot on the on the back end for the actual execution. And so the clients are getting these beautiful decks right. They're getting all these recommendations,

Unknown Speaker 3:18
but they have no team to actually, like, get things done. So when we do hand stuff off their team, right? They're already underwater, they're already understaffed, they're stretched across however many priorities. And so to say, here's the plan, go execute it, right? Nothing is going to come from that. And so the strategy ends up just sitting on a shelf. The client doesn't see any results from this, and then a few months later, they churn. And it's not because, like, the strategy was bad, it's because there was no one to actually deliver on that strategy. So today, I want to talk about the shift that's happening right now, the agencies that are winning, right? The ones that are actually growing, retaining clients, they're building something like durable these are the ones who are delivering strategy and execution. They're doing both. It's not, not an either or not one or the other, right? They're, they're trying to do this without becoming a commodity again. And I think that's, that's a piece that's probably missing through a lot of this conversation. So let's dive in here first. How did, how did we get here, right? Well, phase one, there was this execution trap. And for years, like most agencies, were defined by their output. And so it was design shops, right? Dev shops, we build websites, we run Google ads, and the work was always scoped in deliverables. And so it made all of these like relationships became kind of transactional. Through it, the client held the strategic power. They told you what to build. You built it, and if the results were bad, it was even if it was like their strategy, that was the reason it failed, right? You were the one who got the blame.

Unknown Speaker 4:54
And so that's that wasn't great.

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The.

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Margin when we're talking like pure execution, is also very thin,

Unknown Speaker 5:04
because we're always just, like, one RFP away from being replaced, right? Like if, if they weren't relying on you for multiple pieces, and they were just thinking you're executing the strategy, so it was very easy for them to replace you, and so we'd always have to compete on price, and that's what made the margins tighter, and nobody wants to go back to that. Okay? But then phase two, we came into the strategy correction, where smart agency owners, coaches, advisors, started saying, like,

Unknown Speaker 5:32
you need to own the thinking, not just the doing. And so they invested in strategic like, capabilities, right? They hired strategists, they repositioned. They started selling, like discovery engagements, I

Unknown Speaker 5:45
don't know strategic planning with that. And it worked for a while, because the margins went up, perceived value went up, but then the and the conversations got better. But then we move into step three, which is the over correction, where this advice was really It got simplified in the process. And one from being add strategy to your offering to stop doing execution. And so agencies started believing that, like execution was beneath them, right, that doing the work was a sign you hadn't evolved. And it like

Unknown Speaker 6:15
that. That was where all of this really started to to fall apart. And now I think we're seeing like the consequences of that over correction is, let's talk about the execution gap. Real quick, an agency delivers a strategy, engagement, right? The work solid positioning audit is thorough. They have maybe a 90 day like roadmap that's realistic and specific. The client loves it, but then the engagement ends in the actual work, right, where the content that needs to get written or the campaigns have to get built, right? That's supposed to happen on the client side. And the reality of the client side is that the marketing director maybe has like, three direct reports, and one's on maternity leave, right? Another spending 60% of their time on some internal project to get it going. Then the third is, like, a junior hire who's still learning how to use a CRM, okay? When those three months pass, right? The Agency shows up for like, quarterly review, gonna talk some strategy stuff, and like, the client's gonna say, we haven't got the most of it, and so, like, we've put ourselves in this predicament, right? This agency strategy could have been perfect and exactly right, but the client's not going to see results because they weren't able to actually do any of the things required in order to get those results. So when renewal comes up, the client isn't thinking the strategy was great, we just didn't execute. They're thinking, I spent 60k and nothing has changed. Right? Strategy without execution is just expensive advice.

Unknown Speaker 7:46
So the agencies that I see growing right now all have something in common, right? They own the outcome, not just that recommendation. So one they have, their feedback loops are just generally faster, right? So when the same team is doing the strategy is also running the campaign. Right? They see what's working in real time, and so

Unknown Speaker 8:08
when you're doing like strategy without execution, there's no feedback loop, unless you're going back to the client to see what's working. But the client likely doesn't know all of the different like details and variables they should be paying attention to. The way you do

Unknown Speaker 8:21
two, accountability is clear. So when you when you own both the strategy and execution, right, there's nowhere to hide, right? If the results aren't happening, it's on you, right? That accountability is what actually makes you better, is what gets you the reps, and you get to continuously learn so you can pattern match faster. Then. Three, the client experience is dramatically better through this, because instead of like, here's what you should do, they get here's what we're doing, and here's how it's going, right? And so now your retention goes through the roof, because strategy plus execution creates this ongoing relationship with continuous value, right? Like we're continuously doing the things that need to happen to grow. We're not like leaving it to linger at any point, whether it's for strategy or execution, so the client actually sees things happening, and that retainer feels worth it every single month for them.

Unknown Speaker 9:16
Okay?

Unknown Speaker 9:18
The the argument that I would hear from doing this is a but I won't become But won't I become a vendor again? And it's like the distinction here is everything, right? The old execution trap, like the client owns a strategy, the agency does what they're told. And that's a very like commoditized position. What I'm describing is the opposite, right? The agency owns a strategy and the execution. So you're not taking orders, you're running your part of the show. The difference between being a vendor and being a strategic like execution partner is one word, and it's control.

Unknown Speaker 9:54
A vendor executes someone else's plan, while a strategic partner executes their.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Own plan. It's the same work, right, but just a completely different power dynamic.

Unknown Speaker 10:06
You're the so again, the execution isn't what makes you a vendor, right? It's this lack of control that is what makes you a vendor.

Unknown Speaker 10:14
And so how do we structure this? Well, first, you need to lead with strategy and then execute on what you prescribe. That sounds simple enough, right? The the engagement still starts with strategic thinking, but instead of handing the plans of the client, you say, here's the plan we're going to execute on, on these first three priorities. If you do want the client to take part in it, they can. You can give them assignments, but this also means you need to be kind of coaching them through doing the things to get the right results.

Unknown Speaker 10:45
What I like about actually having, like, assigning some tasks to them, is that now it feels more like a partnership, right? Hey, we're doing all of these things. What are you doing to contribute to this? Besides just fronting the bill? And maybe that's all they want to do. Maybe they don't have any time and they just want to open their wallet, it's like, okay, so maybe we do actually charge more for the execution side, because that becomes a lever that we can move within this process, right?

Unknown Speaker 11:09
Number two, we you need to scope execution tightly around your zone of genius, right? You don't have to do everything, but you should own the execution that maps to the strategy that you sold. So if their team members have something else that they could be doing, right? If maybe you don't touch Social Media, she's not great at it, but that's going to be one of the requirements for distribution. And so you actually put that on their team, right, and then they can just focus on getting really good at social media. And now you're embedding your skills with theirs, and they're actually developing their team based off you. That makes you a lot stickier in this engagement three build repeatable execution systems. The strategy is custom, generally, right? You might hit like certain beats. You might know what you're looking for, but like a strategy for one business should look very different to another. Otherwise, it's just a set of best practices. It's not a strategy. The execution is where you start to systemize, right? That's where the actual margin lives through all of this.

Unknown Speaker 12:09
Number four, we price for outcomes, not hours. I feel like at that point, that's more of that advice that everybody's heard. But again, you can price for hours and still be a profitable agency. There's nothing wrong with that. If that's the business you want to grow, hey, but if you price for outcomes right, you can actually make a lot more money, because the client doesn't care if something takes you 40 or 80 hours right to generate 50 qualified leads. They care that 50 qualified leads showed up. And so we need to be able to prioritize that, and the easiest way to do it is by saying, here's what we're we're going to achieve for you, and then we price based off that number five

Unknown Speaker 12:46
staff. This your projects intentionally, right? A senior strategist, architect, the plan, your execution team can run it, but having these, like regular sync points between them, and making sure you have the right people at at different points is going to be critical for this.

Unknown Speaker 13:01
Now

Unknown Speaker 13:03
zoo quick, lit litmus test for you,

Unknown Speaker 13:07
if you were to ask your client one question, right which is, Can you name one concrete result from our work together in the last 90 days? Not a deliverable, but a result like some sort of like revenue generated right pipeline created something like that. If they hesitated, then you have a delivery problem, right? And that delivery problem is probably not that your strategy is bad, it's that nobody executed the strategy. Strategy

Unknown Speaker 13:33
is the starting line, right? And so execution is the race.

Unknown Speaker 13:40
So

Unknown Speaker 13:41
I'm trying to think about any other thoughts around this. I think that's that's probably good for today. Look, just look at your current client engagements, right for each one, just ask, Are we producing outcomes? Are we producing recommendations? Okay, the fix isn't to just abandon strategy. It's like we need to keep doing strategy, but we need to stop treating strategy and execution as separate offerings.

Unknown Speaker 14:05
Combine them, right? Own the plan, own the work,

Unknown Speaker 14:09
own the outcome, right? And if you're, if you're worried about becoming a vendor, again, vendors execute someone else's plan, you're executing your own right? It's not a step backward. That's the position that every agency should be fighting for right now. So

Unknown Speaker 14:25
if this is like in my cohort, in my one on one coaching, part of the dynamic agency OS is that we we map out your solution design. The idea here is that we're not offering services anymore because we know what problem we're solving for our audience. When we know what problem we're solving, we can define a very clear solution around it now, that solution includes strategy and execution all built in. Ideally, we can do like a like a 90 day flow, right? Honestly, with marketing, it's really hard to get like awesome results in 90.

Unknown Speaker 15:00
Days like, you can do it general ways, right? Especially if you're in like, ads or something more, like demand gen rather and brand like, it's hard. The reason we do 90 days is that we can stay in sync with the like, quarterly budget reviews for clients, quarterly business reviews, right? So while we're doing that, we're showing up and we're kind of tying our work to their results so that they see this. And by doing everything every 90 days, we can come in with a different strategy every 90 days that just kind of builds upon the previous strategy. And we spend the rest of those 90 days actually executing and building out this, like everything that we do when we have a solution, then we just keep coming back to that right. Step one is build the strategy. Step two, we're going to execute, and step three, we're going to optimize, and we keep kind of lather, rinse, repeat, and just keep cycling through this. And so that is what you're aiming to do here, right strategy and execution.

Unknown Speaker 15:53
That's it for this episode. If you like this. Found it helpful, share it with a friend. Do something. Go to Apple podcasts, although no one ever listens there, and give us a rating or review or just continue enjoying all of the content that I'm putting out here for free, and hopefully it's helping your business, but I will see you next week.

Unknown Speaker 16:16
That's the show. Everyone. You can leave a rating and review or you can do something that benefits. You click the link in the show notes to subscribe to agency forward on sub stack, you'll get weekly content resources and links from around the internet to help you drive your agency forward. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai