After your B2B sales agency has a steady pipeline of clients, it's time to think about scaling it.
If you want to scale your agency, you must be able to handle more clients without sacrificing quality, productivity, and bandwidth. Growing your agency is a process, there are no shortcuts! There are many things you need to review, such as processes, documentation, tools, billing methods, reports, client communications, etc.
Be honest with yourself about what needs to be improved in the business. Be sure to document and create templates in whatever area you can. Here are some ways you can scale once you've completed this phase or if your team/partner has the bandwidth to take on more clients, leaving you to focus on the agency.
The best way for your agency to streamline its operations and increase its leverage is to hire a virtual assistant (VA). By outsourcing your day-to-day activities to a VA, you will be able to concentrate on high-value work and eliminate any bottlenecks in your production. Since many people are adjusting to working from home because of the recent boom in remote work, the demand for quality VAs has increased.
Here are some of the myriad benefits of hiring a VA for your agency:
Cost: Not only will you save on in-house office space, but also on labor itself - overseas VAs are often as cheap as $3 per hour.
Skills: Nowadays, your remote assistant is more likely to be fluent in English and proficient in a variety of software platforms and methods. There are no unskilled, unqualified VAs.
Scale: By adding new VAs to your team, you can easily meet demand as your agency grows.
Especially for sales agencies, a CRM system is crucial to organizing existing clients and contacts as well as managing new business opportunities. By keeping all sales opportunities in one system, you can increase visibility in your sales funnel and reduce sales cycle times.
These agencies spend a lot of time searching for information after a prospect becomes a client and do not have visibility into what happens after a prospect becomes a client.
If you choose a system that provides an end-to-end solution with CRM, scheduling, timesheets, reporting, job management, and invoices, you will be able to access all information at the click of a button.
In summary, a CRM should be easy to use, offer the key functionalities and benefits that are important to your agency, and ideally be an end-to-end solution that eliminates the need for multiple tools.
It's inevitable that as your agency grows, you'll feel like you're juggling too many projects at the same time. Every day, you'll face new challenges and find new solutions. It's impossible to accomplish everything in a single day, but the sooner you implement a project management process, the easier it gets to stay on top of everything and avoid something falling through the cracks.
To make sure you stay on top of everything, we recommend a combination of Trello and Slack, but you can also experiment with tools such as Monday, Asana, Basecamp, etc.
As more clients are onboarded to the agency, we have designed our project management system to cover both macro and micro-level client work.
In the macro view, we can see how clients are transitioning from On-Boarding to the end of campaigns.
A micro view is a weekly email that we send to the client every week while they are with us.
Onboarding is the first step, followed by Weeks 1-4, and after that, the client is either put back into Week 1 (if they continue) or into the backlog (if they do not).
Here is the overall Action Plan:
Keeping your website up-to-date and full of all the necessary information is crucial to making sure that potential clients can find you easily. WordPress is a good content management system, which means you won't have to worry about managing it on an ongoing basis. In addition, if multiple people are responsible for updating or maintaining the site's contents, this will be especially helpful.
It's imperative that your website tells clients what you do and how you approach B2B outreach. What problems does your agency solve? What are the top objections your clients have, and do you address them?
If you cannot capture the different information on one page, create separate pages for different customer segments, verticals, and/or services.
Display social proof that showcases your best clients, testimonials, and case studies/reports on how you helped them achieve success.
You should have an FAQ section on your website if you want potential clients to find answers to their questions before making a decision. Alternatively, if you aren't able or lack the bandwidth (or time) to scale up at this point, a chatbot can answer these common inquiries and direct them into the sales funnel instead!
You can stand out from your competition by improving your personal brand. For those of you who already have a following or an audience, this will be much easier. If you're starting from scratch, use your website as a starting point.
Find out where your ideal customers, current and future, 'hang out' online, and pick 1-2 channels where you can provide relevant value to them as a thought leader.
When prospective customers search online, you want them to find what they need; therefore, having listings about them should increase their chances of landing new business leads without doing any additional marketing.
You can create a LinkedIn page for your business and start getting more leads from potential customers if you don't already have one.
First, go to your company's LinkedIn page (if it already exists) and click on "Edit Company Profile." This will allow you to update the information that appears on your profile. You can add pictures, fill out details about what you do, and add other relevant links.
After this is completed, enter all of the social media accounts associated with your company so they appear on the top bar of your profile. Be sure that every employee or team member who needs an account creates one for themselves.
Establish a LinkedIn profile for your company and post regularly. When marketing, promote your brand on LinkedIn and build connections by providing details about your company in your profile so consumers know who you are. Engage with your connections, join groups, and post quality content to LinkedIn.
A directory website listing is the easiest thing an agency can do. It's important for SEO & credibility.
One major advantage of case studies over blog posts is that they show potential clients what you can do for them.
In this guide, we'll show you how to get started writing case studies to attract new clients if you haven't written any recently (or ever).
Case studies speak directly to your potential clients.
It's likely that your blog posts are well-written and informative, but are they driving conversions? Readers are busy, so if your latest post does not address their current needs, you're unlikely to attract their attention.
People love reading about situations like theirs. Case studies, on the other hand, will capture their attention more. When potential client hears your story about how you helped a business like theirs, they'll remember you when they're ready to hire an agency.
Case studies can do everything blog posts can do.
Client case studies don't have to be dry, boring walls of text. They can be informative, entertaining, and inspiring. Just like a blog post, you can share useful findings or advice in a case study. In addition to demonstrating your expertise and positioning your company as an authority, case studies are also an effective way to market your business.
Case studies build credibility and trust.
Whether people hire you or not is largely influenced by your perceived trustworthiness. Typically, clients are hesitant to hire an agency whose past work is not on display. Case studies give them a chance to assess your competence before they hire you.
Case studies make you stand out from the competition.
Case studies are more specialized and challenging to write than blog posts, which means not everyone writes them. If you want your agency to look more professional than your competitors, creating case studies can boost your brand's image.
Case studies make great lead magnets.
The beginning of a case study, along with an offer to receive it in PDF form, is a great way to get people to sign up for your email list.
You can post questions on Quora and get answers to them. Due to their strict moderation policy, Quora questions and answers tend to provide better insight than similar sites such as Yahoo Answers. Quora can help you create inbound marketing opportunities by raising the profile of your company and providing insightful answers.
A question's followers or upvoters can also be helpful in finding potential prospects. The contact details of these people can be found in their public bios or linked social media accounts, or you can reach out to them through Quora's internal messaging system.
We have come to the end of the Definitive Guide Series. Launching and maintaining an agency can be challenging. These guides will help you grow and serve as a resource that will evolve with time. The goal is to run your agency as a business - which means taking time to concentrate on strategy, finances, and operations.
