In The Seven Figure Agency Roadmap: How to Build a Million Dollar Digital Marketing Agency, author Joshua D. Nelson provides a step-by-step, on how to implement agency marketing, how to get results for your clients, and how to implement systems so they stick around long-term. He also writes about building teams and systems, so you become the owner of a reliable and scalable business that can work without you.
“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.” ZIG ZIGLAR
Josh’s Story
I started my first agency back in 2004, it was called Develacom, and it was just a web design and hosting company. I ran it for the better part of four years. And it failed miserably. It had the wrong model. I was selling websites for a $1,000 to $1,500 in a one-time fee and then $50 per month of recurring revenue.
I had the wrong model. I was selling websites for a $1,000 to $1,500 in a one-time fee and then $50 per month of recurring revenue. After four years of running this business and trying my best to get it off the ground, and just not getting where I needed it to be, I had to shut it down. And it was a very painful experience because I borrowed $10,000 from my dad. I come from a missionary family. I’ve got three older sisters and I spent the first 10 years of my life in Haiti. So, if you can imagine a missionary with a $24,000 a year income, borrowing $10,000 from him was like borrowing $100,000.
Five new clients per month, paying you $1,350 per month, gets you to seven figures in just 12 months.
Plumbing & HVAC SEO
I started my current agency, Plumbing & HVAC SEO, in 2011. We grew it to seven-figures in just under two years serving a very specific niche – Plumbing & HVAC Contractors. Currently, we’re running $370,000 a month in recurring revenue and made the Inc 5000 list of fastest-growing companies in the US the last 4 years in a row.
The 5 Stages from Start Up to Significance
- Start Up: The first stage is Start-Up. That means you don’t really have any clients. That’s exciting because you have a feeling of new opportunity and are eager to go out and seize the day. But it’s also a highly stressful time because there’s no money coming in. At Start-Up phase, it’s all on you. You must land the clients, serve the clients, do the marketing, do the positioning, and do the work to get the clients coming to you.
- Struggle: The next stage is Struggle. This is where you’re making $10,000 to $15,000 a month in recurring revenue and you probably have 10 or 15 clients. That’s a struggle because there’s not quite enough money to pay your bills, never mind hire anybody to help you out.
- Success: The Success level is when you’re making at least $50,000 per month in recurring revenue. Again, you have a lot more opportunity at that point to build your team and make it so you’re not doing everything yourself.
- Significance: The ultimate destination is seven figures, Significance. To reach seven figures, you need to be making a minimum of $83,000 a month in recurring revenue.
“Success is goals, all else is commentary.”
Filling Your Funnel
In order to land clients on a consistent basis, you must be able to fill your funnel—get prospects coming to you, ready to buy. You must be able to get people coming in who trust you—people who raised their hand, who have expressed interest, and who ultimately at the bottom of the funnel become clients. You must build your authority and position yourself as the expert so you’re not having to chase people down. If you’re seen as the authority and they believe you’re an expert in their type of business and you’ve got a proven model, they’re willing to pay premium rates. There’s very little sales resistance, and you have consistency and flow. You need to have sales mastery. You have to know how, when people do raise their hand, you can have a great business conversation, you can tap into their needs and their desires, and you can make it clear what it is that you have and what you can bring to the table.
Land Clients. Deliver Results. Retain Long-term.
1 LAND CLIENTS
1: FILL FUNNEL Creating a Massive Surge of Ideal Clients to Fuel Your Agency Growth
Five categories: 1. Cold Outreach 2. Marketed Lead Generation 3. Inbound Marketing 4. Associations / Speaking 5. Joint Ventures
500 quality touches per month will generate at least five to ten raised hands which can result in one or two clients on a pretty consistent basis. That’s been the game-changer for a lot of our clients and a lot of our members. If you’re going to land three to five new clients per month, you must be able to get at least 15 or 20 strategy sessions.
Show them the Problem
Remember, in the absence of a problem, it’s very hard to get somebody to buy anything. So if you can show them, “Here’s where the problems are and here’s what will happen in your business once you solve these (for example, you will see more traffic, more calls, more leads, more profitability), you can get them excited and prompt them to start doing business with you. However, before you can do that, you need to do some research. That requires a bit of work on your part but, with the right tools, it does not need to be difficult task.
Present Your Solution
This is where you get to present your solution. Not on the initial call, but on the second call, after you have researched and presented your observations, instead of just diving straight into the solution on the first call. If you skip step one (the first call) and step two (the research) and just dive straight into your solution, it’s probably going to fall flat. However, if you spend the time in the front end to show them what they are missing as far as opportunities, then you explain,
Here’s what we’re going to do…we’re going to get into your website and we’re going to create these pages, and we’re going to make sure it’s optimized correctly. Then, we’re going to get in and we’re going to make sure your name, address, and phone number are consistent. As well as, make sure that you’re in all the online directories across the web. We’re also going to put a strategy in place to help you get more online reviews from your real customers, so that every customer gets an email after service and they can quickly write a review of your services. Then we’re going to take over your blog and we’re going to start updating the blog for you on a weekly basis, so that you have consistently, fresh and relevant content. Then we’re going to do strategic link building to build inbound links back to your website, which all of this helps to make your website more authoritative so that it can rank better in the search engines.
The truth is if you’re going to scale to seven figures quickly, you need to have one clear idea of what you sell and how much it costs. Then stick to that for a year.
Shiny Objects Syndrome
We all have shiny objects syndrome and it makes it difficult to stick to things when we don’t see instant results. It is common to want to switch between niches often to find one that “works”, but the key is consistency.
The big problem is that a lot of people decide on a niche or a service to provide and then two or three months in, they feel like they need to change things up again and they decide to go down a different path. Clay Collins said, “To the extent that you add another number to any of these, like if you try and do two niches, or you’re trying to sell two programs or five programs, you multiply the complexity, which makes it that much longer before you can truly get your business to the next level.” Yes, over time, you may want to experiment with a second multiply the complexity, which makes it that much longer before you can truly get your business to the next level.
Disclose Price Only After Value Shown Price should only be discussed after the value has been shown, or the prospect’s been disqualified.
99% of the time, you should not lead with price. However, if it’s clearly unlikely to be a fit and you want to save yourself some time and energy, it’s good to just lead with that question and get it out of the way.
One Program
You want a productized version of what you do so that every client gets the same product offering. It might have a couple of different variations, but it’s one product offering. You have a productized offering that is the same for pretty much everybody that you serve, and you’ve got recurring revenue that comes in every single month. This way you can reliably predict how much money you will have every month and you can start to put systems in place and teams in place to get the work done.
All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.
Comments are closed.