Unlocking Your Client Portfolio: The Systems Behind Sustainable Growth
You have built a successful, revenue-generating client roster. But beneath that top-line success, growing those existing accounts often feels like an ad-hoc sales hustle rather than a repeatable, scoped process.
In this SoDA webinar hosted by Tom Beck I joined Vanessa Cartwright, Founder and CEO of Alando Consulting, drawing on decades of agency leadership and advisory experience to explore how to build a client growth system that drives revenue today and sets your agency up for a stronger valuation tomorrow.
Who Are Today's Speakers?
Tom Beck: Hey, everyone, thanks for joining today. We're going to give it just a minute as participants come in. We'll get started in another minute or so. Thank you for joining us today. Some friendly soda faces in here. Hey, uncheck. Jen? Nick, thanks for being here, guys. Sorry, we're not on video. I'd love to see your faces. Natalie, you can just message me, let me know if we're looking good to get started in terms of the waiting room, and we'll get rolling. All right. I'm going to get started. Thank you.
Tom Beck: Thank you, everyone, for joining, and we're gonna get started. First of all, I'm Tom Beck, Executive Director from SODA, and we're hosting the session today. We appreciate you being here. For those of you following the World Cup, if there's anyone here from Argentina or Spain, I hope you're not too hungover from celebrating the last few days. Likewise, if there's anyone here from England or France, I hope you're not too hungover drowning your sorrows in the pubs. It's been quite an exciting run here in the US for all these matches. Today we're going to be talking about building a growth portfolio for your existing client growth. It is an area that we all know is very important, but we often overlook as agency leaders, focusing on new revenue from new opportunities and failing to grow existing clients to the potential of what they could be.
Tom Beck: I was joking with Albert and Vanessa this last week that within the SODA community, we do benchmarking research often, and no matter what the economic climate is like, this holds true for the last 10 years whenever I ask questions about the top challenges that agencies are facing. Growth and new business is always one of the top three. This has been true in boom cycles, and it's certainly been true in cycles where we're facing more challenges systemically or from the market. We're excited to dig into this conversation today. I'm gonna let Albert and Vanessa introduce themselves, but before we do that, just a quick housekeeping item. If you have questions throughout the conversation today, please feel free to post them in the chat or in the Q&A window, and we'll monitor those along the way and try to either get to them in line, or we'll hold some of them for the end of the conversation. Again, thanks for being here. It's really nice to spend an hour with y'all. Without further ado, we're going to jump in. Vanessa, I'm going to let you introduce yourself first. Thanks for being with us today.
Vanessa Cartwright: Thank you, Tom, and the SODA community for having us join the webinar today. I'm Vanessa Cartwright. I've spent well over 20 years leading a pretty wide variety of digital agencies in different roles: managing director, chief client officer, chief operating officer, CEO. I've done that in the US, Canada, and the UK. I've been through that journey of quite a lot of agency acquisitions, both seller and buyer along the way. I've done it for holding companies, independent agencies, and private equity backed businesses. Now my focus is working as advisor and board director and hopefully bringing some of that experience to support founders of typically independent agencies, strengthen their businesses, whether that's becoming more attractive to potential buyers or investors, or simply making sure that the business performs as well as possible. My orientation has always been very client-focused. It's a real passion of mine, which is why we've got the topic today: how do we improve performance from our existing clients as much as possible?
Tom Beck: Amazing. Thank you. We're thrilled to have you, Vanessa. Albert, give us the rundown.
Albert Banks: Absolutely. Again, thanks for having me. I have a kindred spirit in Vanessa, so I'm thrilled to be doing this with her. Albert Banks, 20-year agency veteran. I describe myself as a recovering agency owner. I started out as a developer. My firm first started as a web development shop, moved into a digital agency, merged with a local competitor and union, ultimately had an acquisition and exit from Valtech. I've been through a lot of transitions, acquisitions, and sales. Now I run Apertus. I'm here to help business owners and founders. That can play out as a fractional leader or advisor, typically to independent agencies. I take my experience with seeing the typical growth plateaus and challenges, integrations, and exits, and help folks avoid any of the pitfalls that I experienced so they can have a profitable business that's truly excellent at operations, finance, employee engagement, and ready to either buy or sell whenever that time comes.
Why Do Agencies Struggle With Existing Account Growth?
Tom Beck: Amazing. Thank you for being with us, Albert. Based on the fact that you are still actively consulting in the agency space, I would say your recovery is not going as well as it could be. I know it is like a drug, though. It's hard to get away from. Thank you both. We'll jump right in. To reorient the crew today, we're going to be talking more specifically about growing your existing client portfolio instead of new lead generation. With that as a starter, we'll start with you, Vanessa. What are some of the symptoms of why agencies struggle so much with existing account growth? Before you jump into that, in data we've seen within the SODA community—and it depends a little bit year over year, these are averages—we've often seen that our member companies' existing client revenue might account for anywhere from 50 to 70%, and often it's more 60 to 70% of that agency's revenue in a given year. Yet growth in general is still often elusive. You look at that mathematically and go, 70% of our portfolio is existing client revenue and we just can't seem to grow that, and we're constantly looking at new lead generation or new clients for revenue growth. Why are agencies struggling so much with existing account growth?
Vanessa Cartwright: It's quite the conundrum because it sounds pretty straightforward and you'll hear a lot as an agency leader that it should be a lot easier to grow your business from your existing clients. They are people that know you, ideally who like you, they know what you do as an agency. The theory is great that it should be much more straightforward to find new business from them. There might be a certain allure to the fun of net new business development, but I think it's daunting, and it's funner than it sounds. Some of the work I've been doing recently has been nice, moving from the operator role to advisor role, because I can talk to clients and get a slightly more objective perspective from them around what's going on.
Vanessa Cartwright: What I've heard from some of the agencies I've been working with—and I experienced this as an agency leader as well—are comments such as, 'We've run out of things to sell to our existing clients. We've already sold them everything that we do.' I hear, 'Our team just doesn't like feeling salesy. It makes them uncomfortable. We don't want to put that kind of pressure on our existing clients.' And then I hear, 'Our clients don't tell us enough about their business, we don't really know what their plans are, what their roadmaps are, so we don't know where to find that growth.'
Vanessa Cartwright: What I have found, when I've been in the position of being able to actually go and talk to their clients, is something quite different, and quite revealing. It is things like, 'We really like Agency X, but we want them to take a higher level of accountability for the outcome of the work that they do.' I hear, 'We really like them, but they're not bringing us proactive solutions.' Or I hear, 'We really like them, they're coming to us with recommendations, but those recommendations just aren't grounded in our business priorities.' There's a tremendous receptivity from clients who have their own numbers to meet. They have their own bonuses to make, their own promotions to get. They really are eager to hear from their agency partners what their best recommendations are, but feel that they're perhaps just not stepping up and sharing those. I think that's definitely on the struggle side what I'm hearing.
Tom Beck: I love that. I haven't heard the one: 'We don't have anything else to sell them.' I never knew in professional services we ran into the no more inventory challenge, but we'll definitely add that one to the list. How about you, Albert? You've seen it from both the inside and the outside. Anything to add to Vanessa's perspective in terms of what are some of the key sticking points or struggles you've experienced or seen getting a client account growth engine going?
Albert Banks: Absolutely. Especially the early days when you're just trying to grow and you haven't gotten to scalability. You're relying on the founder, they're the hero. They're out there stomping the grounds and trying to find work, or you're maybe more reactive in order taking. We definitely had that at my job. We were just trying to make payroll, so we were taking everything, and there wasn't a proactivity to it. Later we ran into this AM-PM collision where if you have somebody playing both roles, they could get bogged down on the current work versus being proactive with their clients. You just run into a time constraint, a true issue there with resourcing. Then operational debt. As you're growing and scaling, you may not have the tools connected or the data to even know what's going on with an account, much less think about how to grow it.
What Are the Core Ingredients for a Client Growth Engine?
Tom Beck: This is the other side of the coin or the corollary. Some of them are the struggle. Here's what agencies do well that don't have that same struggle. I think it's helpful to confront it from that angle. Vanessa, maybe you can start with that. What are the ingredients that really make a client growth engine work, and be sustainable?
Vanessa Cartwright: You actually just captured it because you said it's a recipe and a recipe has ingredients, a chef, and steps. I would say the ones that do it most well don't leave it to chance. They don't allow it just to be something that might come up in a conversation or think of it on the fly. You put a practical, repeatable approach in place that has steps that you follow that doesn't leave it to chance. I think that's perhaps the most important.
Vanessa Cartwright: I think there are two others. Setting a goal and setting targets is really important. People are more accustomed to setting sales targets for new business than they are targets for existing clients. As we all know, if you don't have something to measure against, you're not as motivated towards achieving that. Having a high-level growth goal, an actual plan of what you want to accomplish—which might be don't lose this client under any circumstances or get the extra brand that you know the client has—set the goal and set some corresponding targets.
Vanessa Cartwright: The third is a more cultural one, around a culture of curiosity, accountability, and proactivity. The best account people I know actually really do care. They are massively curious. They get excited about the earnings calls, they wear the product, they visit the store. That's part of the fun about working agency side. It is a little bit addictive because you get exposed to so many different businesses, but the exciting part is learning all the different businesses. Accountability: if you've got no one accountable for growth, it probably won't happen. And then proactivity is do something about it. Have a plan, have an owner, have an action date, and make it happen.
Tom Beck: Absolutely. Albert, anything to add to that in terms of what the agencies who do this right do differently?
Albert Banks: Those that do this right are positioned well. Obviously, there's the true positioning, but just how they act, as a strategic partner versus a vendor, sets you up much more easily for account growth. Having a different type of relationship gives you the responsibility and permission to have those kinds of conversations we're talking about. It allows you to see more of the organization, their extended network of individuals within those companies or other brands like Vanessa mentioned. It allows multiple touch points. It's a team sport. Having an executive talk to an executive while maybe an account manager is talking to a project manager on the client side. There are multiple points of contact and not leaving it a single point of failure.
How Does an Outside Perspective Change Your View on Growth?
Tom Beck: For sure. The orchestration piece is really important. I'd be curious, since you've both been on the inside and the outside of an agency and in growth roles, is there anything, as you are now looking from the outside in, things that you realized about what you thought when you were operating within an agency that may just be common reasons we give ourselves for why we're not achieving client growth? Stories that we told ourselves. Is there anything now that you see from the outside looking in where you never saw it this way when you were inside the organization, or these reasons you told yourself you now realize are challenges, but not reasons for not acting?
Vanessa Cartwright: I can start. It's very easy when you're being held accountable for numbers week after week to feel like market conditions are there and you can't change them. How could I possibly change the geopolitical economic landscape? I can't do that, and my clients are all suffering from it, so there's no growth possible. Taking a step outside of that and having a more objective look is asking, where does that actually lead to opportunity? If your client actually goes bankrupt, yes, you probably can't grow very much with them. But that client will still go somewhere else and you'll still get an active referral if you've done the right thing with them as a client. Outside of that scenario, when clients are suffering and in pain, assuming their business continues, there's still an opportunity somewhere. If you look for it and listen for the signals, if they're reducing their team, do they need more external support, et cetera.
Tom Beck: That's a great piece of input, because when we're on the inside, and it's our problem in the organization to solve, it's often easy to get caught in the factors that are stacked against us, and to have this feeling that the market is performing this way, or all my peers are performing this way, so it's just not possible. That is a reality that we're dealing with, but continuing to ground ourselves in what we can control, what we can do, and what new opportunities are revealing themselves in this tough situation, is a really good mindset. Albert, anything come to mind for you? Just a different view that you have now that you're looking from the outside in.
Albert Banks: Looking from the outside, I've been surprised by how varied the approaches to this really are across different companies. Is it the producer, because we're more production focused, and they're the relationship person? Or are we a more traditional model where we have an account lead and structure? Does account growth fall within the new biz function within an organization? Or is it truly founder-led, and they own relationships? The true variety of how this plays out across different agencies was surprising to see.
What Frameworks Help Uncover New Opportunities?
Tom Beck: For sure. Let's dig in a little deeper. We know existing client growth is often a challenge. Vanessa, maybe you can talk to us a little bit about the frameworks that really help us uncover new opportunities and do that in a consistent, disciplined, predictable fashion.
Vanessa Cartwright: I think about that as a client growth system. It's certainly not going to get away from factors outside of your control, but following a repeatable methodology gives you the best possible chance of being successful. There are probably five core components. The first is understanding your customer, understanding the business model. Typically, we get a brief and look at the brief, and you understand that specific thing. But that higher-level understanding at a business level is really important. How do they make money? What's the business model? What are the external factors impacting them? What's their current period performance and forecast strategic initiatives?
Vanessa Cartwright: Gathering all of that information so that you can have a really informed conversation with your client demonstrates that you're interested and that you care, which, to Albert's point, shows that you're thinking as a partner as opposed to an executional vendor. It gives you the ability to know what the other factors impacting your client are that you might not otherwise be aware of. That goes beyond just understanding the business and the company. Really understand your actual client. What keeps them awake at night? How are they measured? Personal motivation is really important as well. How's your client being measured and what are their personal aspirations?
Vanessa Cartwright: The second is around relationship mapping. Know the stakeholder landscape really well. Think beyond just the person that you first interacted with or you think is your primary stakeholder. Who do they report to, who influences them, who maybe is driving a decision that isn't in the room with you, but is actually a very influential force into that final decision? Do as much digging around as you can to understand that and think about people in terms of advocates, neutral, detractors, as well as who's making the buying decision, influencing, and what kind of buyer they are. Are they a technical buyer? Are they an end user? Do that mapping and then map your team against them so that you've got a corresponding stakeholder. You don't want one core account person trying to manage all of those different relationships. Try and map the appropriate structure in your organization.
Vanessa Cartwright: Do the same thing to their technology and partner ecosystem. Who else do they work with? Who are their major technology partners and who are the other partners from an agency perspective that they might be working with? Who's running their SEO program? It's not so much about trying to understand that to win work away from them. Just know the complete picture and build relationships. You can often learn a lot about your client they might not have thought to tell you from talking to one of their other partners. If you find that there is a problem anywhere, maybe there's an opportunity for you to step in and help.
Vanessa Cartwright: The fourth piece is communication cadence. Give yourself the structure that means you have a scheduled executive check-in where you've got some time to spend talking about the business and partnership, not just the project. You don't have to do the same thing for every single one of your clients. Segment your clients to say, this group is high value and high potential, I'm going to spend the time with them doing a semi-annual relationship review session. This group over here, we're going to do a smaller check-in on a less frequent basis. Have those structures in place so you don't leave things to chance. You've got all the tools and capabilities in the world now to prompt us to make sure all of those things happen.
Vanessa Cartwright: The last one is really, how do you take all of that and turn it into a growth plan? What does that mean in terms of a growth plan? There's not a formula, but if you know all of that, and you know what your agency does and what it's done for other clients, think about your goals. Are you trying to retain the clients? Are you trying to sell them different services? Is there a different part of the organization where you want to build a relationship? Do you have a great relationship with the technology team, but not with the brand team? Think about that, set some goals, and put together a short plan that says, this is what I want to accomplish with this client in the next six months. Here's the three things that we're going to do to try and make that happen. Those are: understand your customer, map the relationships, understand the technology and partner ecosystem, set a communications cadence, and create the actual growth plan itself.
What Organizational Structures Best Support Account Growth?
Tom Beck: Before we jump over to you, Albert, are there particular structures that you've seen that best support this? Albert, we could start with you on that, just because you mentioned in your previous comment that agencies are tackling the client growth challenge in very different configurations. Does this kind of approach require a specific structure, or can lots of structures work as long as you know who's doing what?
Albert Banks: Exactly. That's what I was going to add to this topic, the land and expand RACI. Who's accountable for identifying the upsell? In our case, it was a team sport, anybody could identify this. Your QA person, junior account person, strategist—whoever could identify these things. We explained our agency across the board to everybody, so it became a team sport. Who's accountable? But then who's ultimately responsible for running with it? Is it your strategy team? Is it your account lead? Is it the founder? And then who needs to be brought in when it's time to actually put any kind of numbers to that? It can work with any kind of makeup of team, but you have to have a framework and be clear about who's the one tackling each area. Unclear expectations are planned resentments. You're creating problems if you don't.
How Do You Establish the Right Communication Cadence?
Tom Beck: Sounds like good relationship advice in general. A question for you, Vanessa, in terms of the communications cadence. I like this idea of looking across your portfolio and having a different plan or depth based on the client. You don't have to do the exact same depth for every client. I remember when our agency got better at that, getting really efficient with relationships that we felt were probably not going to grow that much, there's probably not a lot of opportunity, so let's not spend extra time there. Going to the communication cadence, we sometimes run into these challenges where we have stakeholders within the organization that aren't necessarily asking for more communication from us. We can say we want to bring you more ideas, but the client has 20 other partners and this isn't the priority. Any advice on how you get to the right level of communication, given what you think the client can take in?
Vanessa Cartwright: You are right, it definitely happens. You feel like you've got great bottled-up ideas and recommendations, and you just can't engage with your client. I don't know that there's a single magic answer to that. It is often slowly but surely that you need to work towards that. You might end up presenting an idea to someone who then wants to bring in someone else, which is the ideal scenario. It's why I say giving yourself the best chance of success. If you consistently do this, and your ideas are good ideas, grounded in the business, some level of persistence without being overly aggressive will ultimately get you there. It's also why you use that broader ecosystem. It might be hard for you to suddenly get a relationship with the person you really think you should get in front of, but maybe one of their partners has a relationship and you can collaborate and do something together. Think outside of the obvious and what's directly in front of you.
Tom Beck: That's great advice. This is all a trust building exercise anyway. You may not get straight to that relationship where you're having a dynamic back and forth conversation with the client all the time. You're winning trust along the way with the projects you're delivering. You're looking for those little cracks of the door being left open to say, maybe there's an opportunity to grow the relationship a little bit here.
Vanessa Cartwright: You might want to do an annual planning session and find tremendous resistance. See if you can get a 45-minute touch point. Do the things that you can. If you've got the plan in mind and the framework there, you know what you're aiming towards.
Tom Beck: One anecdote I want to share on the understanding the business piece, which I think is great advice. I remember early in my career at a digital agency, we were working closely with the advertising agency for a big luxury automotive brand. I was very struck by how the account leads at the ad agency knew the business. They knew the sales volume. They knew the regions that were performing well. They knew what was going on in the competitive set. Because this was a German automotive brand, they knew things like how currency fluctuations might impact the forecast of the business. It stuck with me very early that there's more than just digesting what our client presents to us in the strategy deck. There has to be a genuine interest in understanding the business. I felt like some of these really good account leads would be contributors in a business executive meeting for that brand.
Tom Beck: For those of us who run smaller agencies, where there may not even be a dedicated account team, if you can exhibit that behavior at the executive level, it trickles down. I remember in our agency that the more interested the leadership team seemed in really understanding the business, the more that trickled down to the design teams, the engineering teams, the creative teams, and the project management teams. They realized we need to be genuinely curious in this, not just understanding the dynamics of a given project.
Vanessa Cartwright: That's why I talked earlier about the culture of curiosity, and what makes agencies fun. That ability to deep dive and learn about bizarre businesses in our time. I know more about funeral homes and cremation than I would have expected to, or medical devices. They're fascinating. We need to dig into them.
Tom Beck: You're like, how do we calculate the lifetime value of a funeral home customer? It's a tricky question. The last piece of advice on that for the group, in that aspect of understanding the business, is internal team show and tells. Having teams get together for 20 or 30 minutes and just talk about the business, not the work you're doing for them. Having share outs of major dynamics affecting a sector. Keeping the team engaged. It really has to start with the leadership team within the agency and trickle down into all the practitioners.
Vanessa Cartwright: Engaging in it because most of the clients, you can walk in their store, you can pick up the product, you can sit in a dealership. There's a lot of ways of experiencing the brand. Even though we might be in a digital or technology context and feel that that's less relevant, those companies spend a lot of time and money on building their brands. It's a great way of experiencing the brand. If you don't do that, clients really notice it.
What Are the Common Internal Barriers to Growth?
Tom Beck: Absolutely. I would just leave with this: we're all busy, but I think the difference between good and great in that regard is the Kobe Bryant scenario. He goes to all the practices everyone else does, but he still stays to shoot 500 free throws after practice. You have to get to a little bit of that sensibility to really get to that level of competency. Let's move on. Having a framework, a roadmap, a recipe is a great place to start, but then there are internal barriers to doing that. It could be resource barriers, people barriers, cultural barriers. Albert, let's talk a little bit about the internal barriers that are common, even if you have a structured client growth roadmap and plan. How do you overcome them?
Albert Banks: I think it comes down to people, process, tools, and positioning. On the people side, I preach this over and over, splitting that account and project management role so that you have a clear delineation in role. We did that at Union because we found those folks were spending 95% of their time just trying to do the work in front of them. Their barrier was a true one. It was simply, I don't have the time to focus on account growth, or this is not a great time because of what's going on in the current work in production. We've got all these tickets outstanding, or this deadline coming up, this is not the right time to talk about it. The distinction between relationship and the delivery truly becomes a barrier.
Albert Banks: Then you've got the data. If you don't have your act together operationally, if you don't have your information from your CRM, time tracking, finance, and insights to provide to folks focused on the accounts in a timely fashion, it's really difficult to have a handle on the situation and know when the timing is right. If you don't have the data in a timely fashion, that's going to be a struggle for you. As it comes to positioning, we found that we were giving strategy away for free. We were seen as a vendor versus an expert and a partner. When we rolled out our true strategy department and started splitting discovery and strategy followed by the big build into two phases, we were giving the first away a little bit and that was hurting us. We were seen more as a vendor. Just how you go about doing your work sometimes is a barrier to even being able to have a growth conversation, because you're seen as one thing when you really want to be the other.
Tom Beck: Is it fair to say, Albert, that you have to actually have a plan or a framework in place for how you want to do this to begin with? If you don't, there's little chance of this happening organically. Assuming you have that, you don't necessarily have to have a specific structure in place, but you have to have a way of understanding who's responsible for what. I've seen it a lot where there's too much ambiguity at the who's responsible for what task. There's not an honest assessment of our account manager being responsible for X, Y, and Z growth, but they're also 100% billable. How does that really work?
Albert Banks: Right, or the framework is set up to measure things in a certain way, but you don't have the underlying tools or processes to provide that information in a timely manner, and so they can't achieve the goals that have been set, even if we do know who's responsible at the end of the day.
Vanessa Cartwright: I talked a little bit about accountability at the beginning. Albert talked about the data, and you have to be able to have the data to measure against the targets. I do think that from an organization perspective, clarity around accountability is really important. That can be a barrier if nobody really owns the numbers. It's all about owning the numbers. We've got to make sure that people do know that. There's some discomfort with that if it's not culturally understood and accepted, because it's uncomfortable sometimes because you don't always make them. You have to make sure that people understand accountability, but also it has to be a culture where there's not a sense of punishment if you don't. It's a fine line of making sure there's somebody accountable, owning the numbers, but also feeling supported in the goals they're trying to accomplish.
How Should Agencies Use Systems and Data?
Tom Beck: Let's keep this thread going and talk about it from the systems and data perspective too. There is a notion of trying to define what's possible or define what the objective is, but needing the insight to know if you are achieving it. Albert, I know you focused a lot on this. Talk to us a little bit about where agencies get it wrong. Either they don't invest anything in that, or they go overboard and create systems and structures that are too hard to manage for an agency of a particular size.
Albert Banks: Vanessa said this is hard, but here's one area where it's never been easier to do things with the data that you have. In the world we're living in now, there's no excuse to not be gaining insights with AI. You can use your historical data, your CRM data, you can look at communication cadence, you can look at financials like are people paying their invoices on time, and you can feed that data and predict churn. There's automatic workflows where when we hit a certain percentage of our time on a project, a flag is thrown automatically to the AM and PM, and they can trigger a conversation with a client. This is a little bit more about retention, but it's also about relationships.
Albert Banks: Understanding the client, you can build your own account intelligence model where you're pulling in relevant papers, relevant news, changes of executives at these large companies or competitors, and seeing their financial reporting. You can automate a lot of that to feed directly into the account lead, but also a parsed-down version of that for the rest of the team, like jargon used in that client's industry. You can look at communications. Right now, every meeting is transcribed and recorded, and all of that stuff can be scanned. There are clear signals that you can gain from that information in terms of a risk or an opportunity, and that can feed directly into the scoring that Vanessa was alluding to in the framework.
Albert Banks: I encourage people to just get started with it. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just try some things and see what you can get out of it. It doesn't have to be all of it. I would say measure what matters, and if you're not getting any help out of whatever you're measuring, drop it and move on to something different. The other thing is scoping. To keep clients happy and to find a scope that makes sense, you can use your historical project data and determine how you should do it moving forward based on past performance so you can keep your clients happy and protect your margins.
Tom Beck: I find it interesting on the system side because people are in two camps. They're either completely under-engineered in terms of tools and data and process, or they're over-engineered for how the agency truly operates. On that side of the spectrum, there's this sensibility that if we have these capabilities in place, they will be valuable to us. Then, of course, there are people and process issues that mean we don't get what we thought we were going to get out of a piece of software. I've appreciated agencies in recent years who've told me things like, we went with the PSA, and we went back to spreadsheets a year or two later, because fundamentally we were measuring the business at the level that we felt capable of doing, and we were getting the best information we could. Is there better information? Of course. But we may not need that.
Tom Beck: I encourage people that this is one of those areas where I'm not sure there is a best practice that is a silver bullet for any of you. There are cultural behaviors of how you operate, and there's a level of understanding of how the business is running that you need to feel like you can do it successfully. It's easy to get caught up wanting all of this data, but it's important to know if you're really going to use it. The reality is the levers within our business are fairly simple. We look at the revenue that we have; the things we really need to have a handle on to understand how the business is performing are not that complex, and we can waste a lot of time and energy making them more complex than they need to be.
Albert Banks: I would add the cadence too, Tom. There are some things that you want to measure weekly. It really is important to look at those if you're running an EOS framework in your scorecards. But there are other things that are a little bit more macro, so you're looking at them monthly or quarterly. Choosing the right time to view certain data is critical so you're not overwhelmed by a bunch of numbers. There are only a handful that really are predictive and helpful.
Vanessa Cartwright: That applies to the segmentation part. I would suggest you keep it as simple as possible. I've run into some really complex client segmentations where there's been some algorithmic way to try and assess potential. At the end of the day, understanding on a few simple axes of current value, relationship health, and some qualitative assessment of potential will be good enough to give you what you need to guide how you deal with that particular client.
How Can Project-Based Shops Build Account Relationships?
Tom Beck: That's great advice. It dovetails into a question from Nick. Nick is talking about how they've been largely a project-based shop, and depending on the kinds of projects you're doing, there isn't necessarily the potential for an account level relationship. He's painting this scenario where in the last couple of years, they've started to get a couple bigger engagements that really are more legitimately account worthy. Where do you start in terms of trying to build with that particular client, knowing there's meeting fatigue already? There may not be a huge appetite from a client for you to meet quarterly. How do you move from a project-based mentality to something that is starting to target longer-term client relationships and to grow those?
Vanessa Cartwright: You have to be mindful of scaling it to the type of work that you do, your business, and the type of client. The obvious answer is talk to them and say, it's important for us to make sure that this relationship is going well. To make sure that happens, we'd like to make sure there's some regular checkpoint where we get a chance to share perspectives. It can be 15 minutes. And then say, we love learning about your business. We'd love to be able to support you better in your business. Would it be okay if we did an annual planning session for an hour?
Vanessa Cartwright: I would structure it so you know what your objectives are. I would focus on the objective more than a formula of structure and go, I want to make sure that we understand their business, that the relationship is in good health, and we have some forum for expanding our relationship. Then work with them to set up something, because nobody wants a bunch more meetings. Everyone's going from task switching all the time. It's terribly difficult. But most clients will appreciate that their business is valued, that you want to do the best by them, and that you'd like to help them achieve their goals. Just start simple like that.
Tom Beck: I like that a lot. Making this as genuine as possible is important. Clients are savvy, so the last thing they want is someone scheduling a monthly call so they can sell more. If it comes across as that, you're not going to get in. Have that conversation and come at it from a framework of we love this business, we love working with you, we want to be as helpful as we can.
Albert Banks: Practically, for projects, you can go deeper with a client during discovery and strategy, and it's under the guise of understanding the broader picture. If it's an event, tell me about this event. What's the larger strategy? What's the brand? Getting to know the greater picture at the beginning can set you up for conversations along the way. Have some sort of retrospective or look back built into your process. That can be a Trojan horse. It can be that moment of, we're wrapping this. Along the way, we heard X, Y, and Z. Are we ready to move on to those things? You can bake it into your current process such that it's not just an extra meeting that feels awkward. You have to adjust your process to allow for those things to happen.
How Does Client Growth Impact Long-Term Agency Value?
Tom Beck: We're bumping up against about five more minutes, so I want to cover two things. I want to get to some actions and advice. But Vanessa, let's back up a little bit to ground this in the higher purpose. We obviously want to do this so that we have a successful business today, but there's also building long-term value for our agencies. Talk to us a little bit about why doing this really well makes us more valuable.
Vanessa Cartwright: Anyone looking at your business with an eye to investing or acquiring will want to see that you've demonstrated the ability to grow your existing clients. That's really important. They're also going to want to feel confident in your forecasts and know that they are predictable and can be relied upon. The better you are at figuring out how much potential your existing clients have and realizing it, the more predictable your forecast appears and there's value in that. The last thing, and I think it's hard often for potential acquirers to do, is to really understand the future value. People aren't buying an agency on the basis of its previous value. They're buying it on the basis of its future value. Anything that you can do to help quantify that is going to increase your valuation and your attractiveness.
What Are the Top Takeaways and Action Items?
Tom Beck: We've said this in the SODA community before, but there's an element to this, and in any aspect of running your agency, that you take the mentality of selling your agency tomorrow. What would be all of the things that you're trying to do to make this a valuable asset? To Vanessa's point, an asset that the acquirer has some confidence in. They know the business, they know how to run it, they have visibility into how it's performing, they have visibility into how to grow that. Even if you have zero plans on selling your business, those are practices we need to be working towards just for the ongoing health of it. As we wrap down for the last couple of minutes, can you leave us with a few action items and takeaways? What are some things we can take away from the conversation today?
Vanessa Cartwright: Have some structure for understanding and communicating with your clients. And set goals and targets, because without those, you're a bit rudderless.
Albert Banks: Have a system of record for those two things, whether it be a simple Google Doc or something in your PSA. Having a central area where all this information is stored about clients is really helpful for the entire team, not just the account team, making that dynamic and helpful for the future. Consider an incentive plan. That's something that worked well for us, incentivizing the right behavior. For us, it was both existing revenue as well as net revenue growth for what we defined as our key accounts, those that we knew could grow. Consider incentive plans for the folks that directly impact this.
Tom Beck: Any other comments or questions before we close today? We appreciate the conversation. Albert or Vanessa, any other last thoughts to share as we set people to sail and growing their accounts 30% next year?
Vanessa Cartwright: I would just underscore the curiosity part. It's supposed to be fun. Enjoy learning about your client's business, have genuine conversations with them, and help them.
Tom Beck: On the goals front, start with goals and be okay with missing them. I hate to miss goals, and sometimes that prevents me from putting certain structures in place just individually because I don't like how it feels when I don't hit an objective. If you're starting this practice up, you don't even really know what the goal should be. It is better to start with something and then you may find that you underestimated what was possible in that area or you wildly overestimated it. It's not about getting it right initially, it's just about getting smarter against the structure and understanding what's possible within it.
Albert Banks: My final thought would just be, remember, this business always has been and probably always will be about relationships. There's a reason the top five ways to gain revenue are client referrals, partner referrals, or something to do with your existing clients. It's all about the relationship, and part of that is all the things we talked about here. Make sure you have that with your clients.
Tom Beck: Remember, it is still a great business for all the problems it has. Albert tried to get out and he can't. He wants to be a recovering agency leader, but he just can't help himself.
Albert Banks: I'm trying to make everybody else's journey smoother than mine.
Tom Beck: Thank you both. We really appreciate you sharing your insights and spending time with us today. Thank you for everyone on the call. We appreciate your time. We'll have a recording of this, so we'll send you the link, and I think most of you know how to track me down or someone within SODA, so if you have follow-up questions or want to dig into this further, please don't hesitate to reach out. Thank you all and have a great afternoon or evening or morning, wherever you're calling in from. We'll see you soon.
