Stop Leaving Money on the Table: Part 2

We started with the list of the top 15 things I’ve learned about agencies that keep their clients the longest.

Lets get into the first 5 this week. (If you missed it, catch up here). 

This week, we dive deeper into #6-10, of what agencies are doing to make more money, and keep clients longer.

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. If we’re not yet connected on LinkedIn send me a connection request here for daily agency insights.

6. The main source of client turnover is misalignment between departments within the agency itself. 

There’s no easy way to say this.

Most people just don’t think it's their job to help retain clients. They believe their job is just to do the work assigned to them.

Here’s the thing: Retaining clients is everyone's job. It doesn't matter what department it is. 

Our job as agency owners and executives is to align everyone to this. 

The best agencies all do this and it seems kind of obvious as an agency can't exist without clients.

If you have a department or people in your agency that don’t think this is the #1 point of alignment; you have to get them on the same page ASAP. 

7. Agencies that obsess over client insights retain clients the longest.

This one is pretty short and simple. If you understand your clients' customers better than they do, they cannot leave your agency. 

Low-churn agencies understand this and live it. 

They go to long lengths to make sure they are on top of insights. Attending tradeshows, conferences, etc. so they can learn more about their clients target audience and always be ahead.

They also compile the data they see in their day-to-day work to create even deeper meaning and more insights.

When your agency is small it's hard to do this unless you are specialized in 1 or 2 industries. So make sure you at least have a deep understanding of your top 1-2 client industries.

8. The most important non-delivery task for high retention rates is how much an agency trains their staff.

The agencies with the lowest churn train their staff the most.

One hour per week seems to be the right amount to get into this club.

They train people on time management, client expectations, how to deliver work, communication techniques, etc.

But most importantly how to generate client results and about their clients industries.

9. Being a generalist agency does not mean that your retention will be lower.

But it will mean that it is harder to retain clients.

The strategy work you do for clients at the start and on an ongoing basis will determine the churn.

The reason this is hard is because an agency that specializes in 1 or 2 industries has more data on that industry and the fact they likely have 20-80 clients of that type. 

Said differently, they don't need to look hard for new insights and innovation on strategy. 

10. Agencies with the highest retention think beyond the scope of their service to ensure that their service gets results no matter the client situation. 

Most agencies think in a way where they have clients that get it and those that don’t.

Great agencies educate their clients so that all of them “get it.”

Additionally, they reverse engineer their clients to understand when their own services work best. Under what circumstances, what does the client already have in place, etc.

Then they compile these findings and guide the client how to deploy these things even though they are not in scope - to be clear, they don’t do the work themselves. They just find strategic partners or draw up guides the clients can follow.

If you want to check out the full Youtube video where I go over all 15 of these in full context the link is below.

Catch you next time.

-Nick