10M+ Agency Client Value Formula Part 3

This is the third newsletter in this series that is unpacking the 6 things your agency needs to scale to $10M+. 

If you missed part 2, read last week’s newsletter here. 

I’m Nick Avaria, agency owner, and founder of Agency Acquisitions. Every week I share a client story, insights, and tips into scaling your agency faster, in 300 words or less. Are we connected yet on LinkedIn? If not make sure to send over a connection request.

As a reminder here’s the 6 things we need to deliver to clients so that we can retain them long enough to have a shot at making our agencies 10M+ in revenue.

This newsletter will dive into the next one: 

1. The outcome that you sold them on (results)

2. Consistency of communication (clear service standards)

3. To know what is next weeks or months before it happens (clear roadmap + feeling of progression)

4. A great experience (making them feel special = emotional fulfillment)

5. Education on your field of expertise (they want to learn and understand what is going on)

6. Lead them, which actually means they want insights (3 levels of insights: marketing level, business level, industry level)

#4 - A great experience

A great experience is a requirement from an agency, but it's often overlooked.

To be clear, “relationship” is table stakes in 2025 - it may buy you an extra chance, but that's about it.

A great experience = the sum of all the parts. 

But for now let's focus on how we make clients feel.

Some tactical examples of how to drive experience:

1. Getting to know clients closely (through surveys and well timed questions) 

   1. Get to know the main point of contacts birthday, anniversary, kids birthdays, etc.

2. Gifting - find out what they like; hobbies, sports they watch, things they collect, etc. then give those gifts. Spend more than you think is prudent.

   1. A common mistake is giving gifts to the owner of the business rather than the point of contact. Trust me, the owner already gets plenty of gifts from the other suppliers. You can get a lot more referrals from middle managers and front-line employees that you have sent gifts to in the past. When they move on from their current job, they will recommend you to their current employer.

3. During the first meeting send them their favorite drink or snack

   1. In this day and age doordashing things is very easy, and it's a nice and unexpected touch.

4. Hand-written notes - these go further than you think. Send them during birthdays and other special occasions. 

   1. Getting the account manager to send one at the beginning of an engagement also goes a long way. Write down why you are excited to work with the client.

5. Client trophies - send clients awards for excellent results

   1. This one is a bit off the beaten path. When the clients hit milestones with you send them something to commemorate the occasion. Some examples could be the 100th lead. Hitting 10x ROAS, or other memorable occasions. As much as we helped them get those results we need to celebrate the occasion and give them credit. As with the gifting, always do this with the point of contact rather than the owner or executive.

The hallmark of a great client experience is reverse engineering how your clients feel at different points of your service delivery.

The problem is we’re not mind readers, so it is very difficult to do the right thing at the right time.

That is unless we engineer the experience in a way that we make what they are going through predictable to us. 

This is why I swear by what I call the ‘“100-days of onboarding” mentioned in the last post. 

By putting the client in a controlled environment where we are giving them inputs to interact with 50+ times in 70 business days we guide their journey thereby creating a more predictable emotional state.

The result of this, along with us getting them the results they hired us for, is that by day 100 (business day 70) they are in a place to give us testimonials, upsells, and referrals. 

If you want a more in depth video walkthrough you can find it here: 

Tune in next week when I go over the next part of this series.

I’m opening up a waiting list for a group coaching version of the work I do with agencies 1-to-1.

If you are interested in being part of this first group you can email me at [email protected]