DataDriven – Agency Jumpstart

Feature of DataDriven – Agency Jumpstart

SECTION 1: Agency Fundamentals

• A simple walkthrough of how to interpret a profit and loss statement so you understand the basics.
• The TWO accounting statements you need to master to check if your agency is profitable
• A complete thorough deconstruction of what a balance sheet is and all its components.
• Why Performance Based Consulting sounds great on paper, but is actually terrible in practice
• A downloadable revenue model calculator to help you determine which revenue model to choose for your services
• Why it’s difficult to scale revenue with big projects
• The ONE non-negotiable thing your services need to have in order for you to be profitable as a freelancer or consultant
• Why boring industries can sometimes make you the most money.

SECTION 2: Business Development

• 16 lead generation tactics that require ZERO cold calling
• The single most important lead generation tactic that allows you to position yourself INSTANTLY as the expert just by association
• Complete deconstruction of how your prospective client thinks about their problems and how you can leverage that into your sales pitch
• The SINGLE most important concept for service businesses to understand in order to easily hit income targets
• The TEN sales metrics every consultant or service business needs to track in order to understand the full sales picture and its impact on profits.
• The ingredients of a great sales pitch deck to persuasively communicate the value your service provides to prospective clients.
• The THREE biggest mistakes service businesses make when marketing their website and how to fix them
• 5 tactics that will easily improve your website’s homepage so you avoid the kitchen-sink marketing syndrome
• How to leverage knowledge of client budget cycles into your sales process so you can intercept them when they are most likely to buy
• My Client Budget Cycles framework to track client’s budget cycles and stay top-of-mind during the sales cycle
• Why most agency’s revenues come from 2/3 of existing clients and how client relationships are the difference factor between you and your competitors
• The Bad Client Checklist and the Sauer Principle

SECTION 3: Growing Your Agency

• Why agencies fail in making clients happy with the work they deliver
• The 9 critical questions you should ask your clients during the onboarding process to manage client expectations
• The FOUR components of project management
• How to receive timely payments from clients
• My secret to effective Statements of Work that you can learn and implement right away.
• Discover how to use the RHC metric so you know EXACTLY when to hire a new employee from a financial perspective
• Discover the right time to hire an employee from an operations standpoint with the 8-step Hiring Flow Framework
• The best advice my CFO gave me while growing my agency
• Common pitfalls to avoid as a subcontractor
• Why you should involve your employees in your marketing and business development.
• The truth about retaining employees and how to determine if you should or should not give your employees a raise

SECTION 4: Long Term Planning

• The THREE different phases of building an agency
• The difference between an affiliate and a business partner.
• How to deal with your existing business partners and the 4 things you need to consider in case you decide to end your partnership
• The 8 decisions executives make and the primary responsibility of your company’s shareholders.
• The THREE types of businesses that could potentially acquire your business and how each one goes about acquiring an agency business
• The organizational chart that my own agency used for years and the largest role that made up 75% of employees
• How to apply the 80/20 rule to your services using The Profit Opportunities Framework so you know which are bringing REAL profits and which are not worth offering anymore
• How to create a customer success strategy that you can easily reproduce, so the best clients keep working with you in the future

SECTION 5: Temptations To Avoid

• Understand why not all revenue is good revenue
• Make a choice in your business between creating a platform or providing services
• Don’t try to scale your culture too quickly
• Every agency must have these 8 business planning building blocks in place before growing
• Be sure to differentiate your services, and use third-party recognition whenever possible