Dan Martell - How to Create Your Agency's Positioning Strategy

00:00:00.120 Was I singing Madonna earlier?

00:00:02.080 What was I singing?

00:00:03.080 Oh, Cotton Eye Joe.

00:00:04.400 I was singing Cotton Eye Joe,

00:00:05.400 but then I think I was singing

00:00:06.320 Like a Virgin for some reason.

00:00:16.320 The right way to build a consulting agency.

00:00:18.800 In today's video, I wanna share with you guys

00:00:20.440 how to overcome the frustrations of having projects

00:00:23.560 that always go over scope

00:00:25.020 and you essentially make no money on,

00:00:26.880 to having people on your team

00:00:28.200 that don't buy into your vision or even be in a situation

00:00:31.960 where you don't have systems or processes to scale

00:00:34.280 or maybe you've even tried to scale

00:00:36.600 and you ended up with more headaches, more overhead,

00:00:39.640 more people and you made less money.

00:00:42.140 You know, when I was starting my company Spheric,

00:00:44.580 we tried to do the same thing and really,

00:00:46.280 for the first year and a half, we grew to a dozen employees

00:00:48.960 and it was frustrating.

00:00:50.160 I felt like nobody really understood what work

00:00:52.100 they were supposed to be working on

00:00:53.560 and what the expectations of the clients were

00:00:55.660 and it always felt like I was two steps behind

00:00:57.960 And then one day I understood, somebody shared this with me

00:01:01.040 that the framework or the methodology is the product

00:01:04.740 in a consulting agency.

00:01:06.420 So if you don't have a methodology,

00:01:08.400 if you don't actually name, say,

00:01:10.020 this is the way we're different, this is what we do,

00:01:12.340 this is how we do it, and have that named,

00:01:15.320 then you don't really have a business.

00:01:17.100 You're just taking orders, you're doing custom work

00:01:19.140 all the time, and it will burn you out,

00:01:21.520 especially if you do this for 10 plus years.

00:01:23.560 So what I wanna share with you guys is how I thought

00:01:25.660 through designing this framework I called ours iCircle.

00:01:29.160 It was based on agile development methodologies

00:01:31.960 and a few other components and how we decided to focus

00:01:35.540 on enterprise portals as our core solution

00:01:38.500 and only after we nailed that and built the repeatable

00:01:40.900 scalable systems that we then thought about

00:01:44.480 identity management, which is called IDM

00:01:46.520 or business process automation.

00:01:48.520 So it was very focused and then once we nailed that,

00:01:51.980 then we added a few other lines of business

00:01:54.360 to scale out the company.

00:01:56.240 So there's a framework, I call it the agency model

00:01:58.920 and it goes like this.

00:01:59.760 The first part is your roadmapping step.

00:02:02.680 And I learned this from my buddy Brennan Dunn

00:02:05.320 and it's really defining what you do up front.

00:02:08.500 Take the sales process and actually charge for it.

00:02:11.520 Okay, so a lot of people sit down,

00:02:12.800 they talk to a customer, they spend two or three hours

00:02:15.300 on the phone and then they create a scope of work

00:02:18.040 or a statement of work.

00:02:19.320 And that effort of understanding the customer's needs,

00:02:22.480 translate that into a solution, presenting it to them,

00:02:25.540 I mean, you'll probably get one out of four customers

00:02:28.480 you present that with, which is super frustrating

00:02:30.400 because it takes a lot of time.

00:02:33.020 What my buddy Brennan says is take that effort

00:02:36.140 and create a outcome for the client that you can charge for.

00:02:40.040 So for example, if you are a design agency,

00:02:43.160 you could say, look, this is one of my clients

00:02:45.840 I've worked with, they call it the dig.

00:02:47.520 The dig extracts the brand from the company they work with

00:02:51.280 and it gives them a roadmap that they can execute against.

00:02:54.460 It talks about customer personas,

00:02:56.040 it talks about the strategy, and the whole process,

00:02:58.980 and I believe they charge around two to $3,000 for this,

00:03:01.720 the whole process gives them a document

00:03:04.160 that the customer can execute on their own.

00:03:06.200 So that's the key.

00:03:08.160 A great roadmapping process is an output

00:03:12.180 that they can actually take and execute

00:03:14.240 without your company.

00:03:15.960 Now if they do that, if you deliver on that

00:03:18.240 and you show them how much work it is

00:03:19.940 and how detailed you guys are

00:03:23.080 and that you guys actually know how to do it,

00:03:24.840 then you can convince them to do the ongoing services.

00:03:27.200 So the first part is a paid road backing service

00:03:29.880 that everybody pays for,

00:03:31.040 then it goes to an ongoing service.

00:03:32.580 This is some kind of monthly retainer,

00:03:35.000 some kind of service that you can define and create

00:03:39.080 that they pay every month to get a result.

00:03:41.340 And it could be ongoing development,

00:03:42.800 it could be ongoing design services,

00:03:44.540 it could be ongoing bookkeeping,

00:03:46.080 and I'll share with you guys a quick story

00:03:47.700 with my guy that I work, Mr. Greg Crabtree

00:03:50.700 from Simple Numbers, but same model,

00:03:52.820 same process, ongoing service.

00:03:54.560 And then here's how you think about the extra part.

00:03:57.920 It's really the third part of the framework

00:03:59.400 is if you have things that come up

00:04:01.580 that are out of scope, right?

00:04:02.900 You said, here's what we're gonna do.

00:04:04.100 We're an agency, a design agency.

00:04:05.760 We're gonna develop this brand and visual assets.

00:04:08.600 The ongoing services continue to enhance that

00:04:10.980 and maybe deploy it to different locations,

00:04:12.780 different contractors you work with, create those assets.

00:04:15.060 But then all of a sudden there's a need

00:04:16.260 for copywriting for their website.

00:04:17.920 That would be considered an enhancement.

00:04:20.200 And enhancements are strategically defined

00:04:23.300 and processed and created and almost like mini products

00:04:27.260 that you can upsell to the customer.

00:04:29.380 So ongoing service is a fixed monthly fee.

00:04:31.880 Then you have these enhancements that are very defined.

00:04:34.320 You know how to execute them.

00:04:35.580 It could be stuff that's done within your team

00:04:37.940 or you can partner with a third party company

00:04:40.960 to execute on it, but it all integrates

00:04:42.820 into your ongoing service.

00:04:44.320 It's very detailed.

00:04:45.260 account managers are usually responsible

00:04:47.260 for identifying those opportunities

00:04:49.020 and presenting them to the client.

00:04:50.760 But that way it's very clear to the customer,

00:04:53.020 to yourself, to your whole team

00:04:54.720 that this is how we do it, that's the road mapping.

00:04:57.620 Here's the ongoing service so you build

00:04:59.300 that reoccurring revenue.

00:05:00.560 And then if there's these one-off situations,

00:05:02.760 a contest, some kind of theme guide

00:05:07.940 that you need as a visual asset,

00:05:09.220 sometimes you want kind of like a branding document,

00:05:11.700 that might be an enhancement.

00:05:12.980 All of those are very clear cut and focused.

00:05:15.280 So that is the simple agency model.

00:05:18.860 A real great example is Greg Crabtree.

00:05:20.620 He has his book called Simple Numbers.

00:05:22.800 That's his marketing and I'll share with you guys

00:05:24.360 how that fits into the whole mix.

00:05:26.320 That book gets people involved, interested in his services

00:05:30.000 which goes into the financial model.

00:05:32.200 That's his road mapping service,

00:05:33.540 so the Simple Numbers financial model.

00:05:35.360 It's a fixed fee.

00:05:36.680 Clients come in, they present their books.

00:05:38.680 Greg does all that work, well his team does.

00:05:40.740 Presents it to the client.

00:05:41.900 So that's a very focused, very specific offering

00:05:44.900 presented to the client and then after that,

00:05:46.580 the ongoing service is updating the books every month

00:05:50.080 to get the new updated financial model.

00:05:51.800 Now you can, they'll teach you how to do it

00:05:54.340 amongst your own team if you have your own bookkeeper or CFO

00:05:56.820 or you can just pay a monthly fee to have them do it

00:05:59.320 and then the enhancements are tax type situations

00:06:02.220 or other financial things that a traditional

00:06:04.480 accounting firm would do.

00:06:05.960 That is an example and there's many others.

00:06:08.360 If you look into the world of agencies and consulting,

00:06:11.200 The ones that have figured out how to scale it,

00:06:12.800 they've used this process because it's very clear

00:06:15.380 and focused and you figure out your profit margins

00:06:17.580 and you understand the deliveries and the scope.

00:06:19.540 It all comes together.

00:06:20.380 Now, here's the bonus.

00:06:22.520 If you do this right, the road mapping step

00:06:27.180 has got three kind of features to it.

00:06:28.820 One, it becomes your USP, your unique selling proposition.

00:06:31.960 Most agency founders actually don't do anything unique.

00:06:35.920 Or maybe they do, but they don't have a great way

00:06:37.620 to position it or explain it.

00:06:39.320 If you have this process, and you can name it,

00:06:41.760 like ours was called iCircle,

00:06:43.560 I've heard it called the startup bootcamp process,

00:06:47.900 or the dig, or, I mean, there's just so many different names.

00:06:51.160 Once you define that, that's your USP.

00:06:53.000 That's what makes you different and unique in the market.

00:06:55.300 It also acts as your content marketing.

00:06:57.680 So I talked about the marketing step.

00:06:59.340 For Greg, it's a book.

00:07:00.680 In that book, you will learn how to create

00:07:02.340 your own financial model.

00:07:03.580 Most great blogs teach what the company does

00:07:07.620 for their clients as a paid service.

00:07:09.580 So do it yourself, here it is.

00:07:11.220 So you can essentially take the road mapping process

00:07:14.520 and what you would work through with the client

00:07:16.100 and the output and take each one of those steps

00:07:18.460 and extract it as a blog post.

00:07:19.800 So it becomes your editorial calendar

00:07:21.840 for incredibly targeted, specific, and qualified content

00:07:26.080 to get people interested in what you do

00:07:28.440 and are ready to pay because if they wanted to,

00:07:30.740 they could do it themselves.

00:07:32.040 And then the third part is it becomes a filter

00:07:33.980 for your customers because many of you,

00:07:36.180 maybe you have this experience, you have people

00:07:38.100 that really were just kicking the tire. 1.00

00:07:40.280 They were just interested in getting a proposal.

00:07:43.620 They weren't really, they didn't have the budget,

00:07:45.540 they were trying to use your proposal against somebody else,

00:07:48.340 but they're just not serious.

00:07:50.000 With changing the whole model where, you know,

00:07:53.040 you produce the content, get some interested,

00:07:55.120 they then pay for that road mapping process,

00:07:57.820 it becomes a filter for only very serious customers

00:08:00.780 that have the budget, that are ready to invest

00:08:03.740 in themselves and your services.

00:08:05.460 And it just makes the whole company a lot easier

00:08:08.340 to operate and manage.

00:08:09.760 So that is the process.

00:08:11.340 Number one, road mapping.

00:08:12.340 Number two, ongoing service.

00:08:13.960 Then you have your enhancements.

00:08:15.340 All those act as a filter for customers.

00:08:18.300 It provides your editorial content for your content.

00:08:21.580 And also gives you a USP or unique selling proposition.

00:08:25.480 That's what I wanted to share with you guys

00:08:26.740 to really help you scale your business to the next level.

00:08:29.620 As per usual, I want to challenge you

00:08:31.720 to live a bigger life and a bigger business.

00:08:34.220 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:08:35.840 If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel

00:08:38.100 for other tips on how to start and grow your business

00:08:40.580 and join my newsletter where I send out invites

00:08:43.660 to exclusive events, free training content,

00:08:47.180 and community contests.

00:08:49.340 And also, if you wanna get going, you're ready to go

00:08:51.680 and now is the moment, not later,

00:08:53.720 and you want some more Dan Martell, click the videos.

00:08:56.040 I've got queued up for you to help you continue

00:08:58.480 on your journey and I will see you next week.

00:09:04.220 You

Dan Martell - August 29, 2016

How to Create Your Agency's Positioning Strategy

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