This week I’ve spent 5 hours looking at 40 agency owners’ books.
That’s Board Meeting week inside our TABLE groups where we drop the normal agenda so everyone can report on how things went in their agency last month. Everyone tracks slightly different things, but almost everyone’s got revenue, expenses, profit, leads, and closed deals in their performance trackers.
Our crew ranges from agencies with 20+ team members down to owner/operators just trying to fund the lifestyle they want. There are different markets, services, and levels of experience.
But every month we do this, there’s always one constant: the ones doing the best are the ones selling more to their existing clients.
There’s plenty of evidence out there to back up this idea, but logic alone will tell you that people are much more likely to buy from someone they already know, like, and trust. Still, very few of us make it a focus.
The excuse I hear most often (and the one I’ve most certainly used myself) is not wanting to “bug” our clients. We’ve convinced ourselves that our clients just want to be left alone… but is that actually true?
What business owner wouldn’t be happy to spend $1,000 if they could get $2,000 of value in return? They can’t possibly ask for it if they don’t know it exists.
We all think more about websites and digital marketing in a day than our clients think about it in a year. Add up that difference over how long you’ve been doing this work, and there’s a canyon between the knowledge and experience you have and what your client has.
Accessibility remediation, performance work, analytics that actually provide insight, review generation, policy compliance, security, SEO… There are dozens of ways we could do it. Choosing to keep that to ourselves in the name of “politeness” is really just gatekeeping.
Not every client needs all of that, but almost every business could benefit from something on that list.
And it doesn’t have to mean putting them in a funnel, pressuring them, or being sleazy. It’s just about having their best interest in mind and being able to apply our skills to help their business grow.
That’s the job, and it’s a win-win.
