Delivering Amazing Results

Client and Project Management

A few years ago, talk of a new, luxurious music festival shook the music industry.

The name of this event was "Fyre Festival," and it was founded by famous rapper Ja Rule and a man called Billy McFarland.

It was supposed to be a huge deal, with the festival promotion promising attendees accommodation in lush villas on an island paradise in the Bahamas.

The festival was going to take place over two weekends during which people would enjoy top-class music acts while indulging their taste buds
with gourmet meals.

However, while the marketing team kept promoting all of these splendors, many complications were going on behind the scenes. Yet, the organizers didn't mention anything going wrong.

As the Fyre Festival dates grew closer, people were already buying six-figure tickets for the event. The festival was intended to promote a new app to streamline the booking process for rising music talents, talks about investments in the app were also underway.

Then, finally, the time came for the festival to start, and the first attendees arrived. What they found wasn't the luxury featured in the promotional material that was flooding social networks. Instead, people found themselves at a surprise beach party where they were supposed to wait for their accommodations to be ready.

Soon enough, it turned out there was no sign of the villas promised in the festival marketing. In their place, pre-packaged sandwiches and damp mattresses in tents, soaked from the recent rain. The festival visitors learned that rather than an exotic beach, the festival proper was taking place on an abandoned development ground.

It didn't take long for the entire event to get officially canceled, and lawsuits against the organizers followed in the coming months. As a result, McFarland received a six-year prison sentence, and vast amounts of money were forfeited. Worst of all, the Fyre Festival wasn't simply a con job done on unsuspecting patrons.

It was a project that started with outrageous promises but couldn't deliver even a portion of them. There's a valuable lesson here, and it has to do with managing projects and clients properly; before spiraling into a spectacle of disaster and fraud, the wrong steps taken by organizers started simply enough, as a cautionary tale of how unrealistic expectations can take on a momentum of their own.

If you want to deliver high value on what you promise, you will need to manage your client's expectations and your projects with utmost efficiency. In this chapter, you will learn how to do just that.

Framing Your Client’s Expectations

The question of managing your client's expectations starts from the very beginning of your onboarding process.

While you have told the client what you are going to do in previous meetings, you will get into the details of how the rollout will happen once the actual onboarding begins.

This is the point where you set up the entire framework for everything you will deliver and put specific processes in place. But you will not do that part by yourself.

Rather, your client will become an active part of that framework in the sense that the two of you will be getting the details worked out together.

In practice, it might look like this: You will have a meeting with the client, explaining which deliverables they will receive by a certain date. Then, you will outline the rollout. During that meeting, you will clarify what your next actions will be, as well as what you will need from the client.

Then, you will continue to have similar meetings at the defined cadence. This approach will help you solidify the expectations and deliverables.

It will serve as a constant reminder for the client about the agreement you have reached at the start of the relationship in terms of how they will get to the outcome they want.

This is the main point of onboarding meetings. It is where you dot all of the I's and cross all of the T's. The goal is to cover every aspect thoroughly, ensuring that you and the client are on the same page in every regard.

However, this drives creative people to think that they do not like structure.

This is fundamentally, biologically untrue. Humans as a species thrive in structure – we are the rules animal.

If you look at the very term "creative processes," it has the word "process" in the name.

In other words, there's definitely a structure to creative work.

And creative people are often more structured than others.

As a creative, you can thrive in a process-oriented environment, even though you might not realize the connection between it and your own creativity.

Documenting, defining, and allowing those processes to be replicated is critical to creative work.

This is something you need to understand for yourself and explain to your clients.

It is best to start thinking about creating an assembly line-esque process for your work, which is something you can also guide your clients through.

It doesn't have to be an overly massive, finely orchestrated thing.

In fact, in conversations about structure and processes, it is best to adhere to the KISS principle.

Keep it as simple as possible and break it down in a detailed fashion to the most simplistic step-by-step instructions.

This part is really important in terms of getting on the same page with your clients and framing their expectations.

You need to show them that the methods and processes you are introducing are in line with your creative efforts.

In fact, you are setting up standards that will apply to both your agency and the client in terms of how everything else will function from that point onward.

Defining Communication Expectations

During the onboarding process, you will also need to set up the standards of communication.

Many agencies make a mistake in that regard because they create certain expectations with their clients that the agency will respond to
every email from them within an hour.

This ends up being a detriment to everyone. When an agency is constantly scrambling to reply to the client, those answers aren't well thought out and ultimately serve no purpose.

That's why you have to set the expectation that the client's emails will always be important and that you will get back to them.

However, you need to make it clear that the reply might come later the same day or within 24 hours, not immediately after you have received the email.

Standards of communications such as this allow for more clarity both in how your internal team understands what the client should experience and in setting the client's expectations towards your agency.

Your onboarding process should also establish a timeline that your client will easily understand. Here, the main point is to remember that your client is not an expert in your processes. In other words, you will need to help them understand what you will do without any assumptions.

Define each step using simple, plain language so that everything from the client experience to your agency's standards is 100% clear. Then, once these basics are covered, you can move on to the finer details of your relationship with the client.

And these can really be small things, not grand gestures. The main point is that these personal touches should always be about the client rather than about you. For example, you could send something like branded mugs or similar items.

But the branding should be of your client or something they care about, not of your agency; no one cherishes the free pen they get from their local bank branch. But small tokens of appreciation can show the client that you are thinking about them.

They also make your clients feel good about working with you and let them know that you are acting in favor of your relationship. While this detail might seem like something that can be overlooked, it actually goes a long way.

By maintaining this white glove service, you are building upon the rapport you have established earlier and taking the relationship with your clients to a different level. People remember how they felt for a lifetime…

Learn to Say No

When you are interacting with a client, it can be really easy to start overpromising during the initial meetings. This can eventually lead to issues when you need to deliver on those promises. We've already seen how poorly that can go in the example of the Fyre Festival and the logistical nightmare that left attendees utterly disappointed.

After you have set up the framework and outlined all the important aspects, the client can come to you with some small requests. However, if you do not know how to manage them, those requests can start stacking up because it doesn't seem like a big deal to say yes to them individually. Clients often act this way because they might not understand the exact scope of your work.

And even if you explain everything to them in detail and put certain limitations in place, they might still come back with little requests. That's where you have to remember the dangers of overpromising. If you cannot be sure you can deliver on something, you will need to say no to the client and explain why that's the case.

Many agencies have a fear of saying no because they think it will put them on bad terms with the client. In reality, when you decline a client request because it falls outside of the scope of what you can deliver, you will earn even more respect from them. However, learning to say no is not just about having others respect you. It is primarily about having respect for yourself.

When you determine your boundaries, you are making sure that you are holding yourself to a standard. Your time is precious. It is important to show your clients that you respect yourself enough to have boundaries.

Scope Creep Management

Even if you do not take additional requests from clients, projects can quickly get bloated and surpass their original scope.

This can often happen because you want to help your clients as much as possible, but it leads to many issues, such as lowered profitability and the inability to produce quality results for the unrealistic expectations that you set.

Furthermore, many agencies keep the information about the project's goals and full scope from their creative and operation teams, which means that their teams can't be a part of the early warning system.

These factors allow for scope creep to get out of hand and endanger the entire project. One of our clients had exactly that happen to their agency. They were working with a client for a number of years, and during that time, the scope of their work kept slowly piling up. In fact, when we took a look at what they were doing at the time, it hardly resembled what they started from.

Initially, this agency was supposed to do creative design for their client. However, they ended up doing social media management, content and digital advertising, and a bunch of other stuff that grew the relatively small scope they started with into a behemoth of scope creep.

Resolving this situation took plenty of careful handling. We helped the agency craft an email that addressed every aspect. In this email, the agency management explained one crucial thing: that they were wrong to have let the situation develop in this way. They acknowledged that they set the wrong expectations and that they went way outside of the scope.

Further, that this approach led to years of mismanaging their account and that the situation had been completely unprofessional. Despite acknowledging all of the above, the agency had to make changes. As much as their client wanted to make money, the agency needed to do the same. The client responded, agreeing with what was brought up in the email and proposing to talk about the pricing.

As you can see, once your agency starts building scope creep, it can be challenging to account for it and set everything back on track. Worst of all, it can happen without anyone noticing the effect right away. Instead, you only become aware of it when it is almost too late – describing this as a creeping process is very apt. This is why you need to think about scope creep before it happens.

There needs to be processes in place that can alert management or project management that the work is reaching certain thresholds, safeguards to ensure a relationship remains profitable. At the same time, your team needs to be aware of crucial project information and understand what success should look like and what the agreed scope of the project is.

Making your team a part of an early warning system is one of the ultimate steps in dealing with the scope creep issue. If you have such early warning systems in place, you can start making corrections. This starts as an internal process. However, once you figure out the necessary adjustments, you will need to let the client know about them.

This is when a simple favor can grow into scope creep and become a real problem. And in the long term, it is a sure way to turn your best clients into the absolute worst clients. Yet, that doesn't mean you should never do favors for your clients.

However, you must make it clear that, should they ask you to do something outside of the agreed work, it is a one-time thing, setting the right
expectation. This can be as simple as saying, "We’re happy to help you out with X this time, although it is outside of our current scope."

When the staggering difference in the agency's work became apparent to everyone, they concluded that the situation was in desperate need of some management. They ended up telling the client about everything they were doing and that they had to adjust the scope. The agency then presented its client with a new price.

And, of course, the client was furious. The agency had been doing all of that work for years and had only now accounted for it with a price four times larger than the initial fee. In this case, the client actually had some reasonable cause to be upset; they'd become accustomed to how things functioned for a long time – the expectations from precedent were long set.

Resolving this situation took plenty of careful handling. We helped the agency craft an email that addressed every aspect. In this email, the agency management explained one crucial thing: that they were wrong to have let the situation develop in this way. They acknowledged that they set the wrong expectations and that they went way outside of the scope.

Further, that this approach led to years of mismanaging their account and that the situation had been completely unprofessional. Despite acknowledging all of the above, the agency had to make changes. As much as their client wanted to make money, the agency needed to do the same. The client responded, agreeing with what was brought up in the email and proposing to talk about the pricing.

As you can see, once your agency starts building scope creep, it can be challenging to account for it and set everything back on track. Worst of all, it can happen without anyone noticing the effect right away. Instead, you only become aware of it when it is almost too late – describing this as a creeping process is very apt. This is why you need to think about scope creep before it happens.

There needs to be processes in place that can alert management or project management that the work is reaching certain thresholds, safeguards to ensure a relationship remains profitable. At the same time, your team needs to be aware of crucial project information and understand what success should look like and what the agreed scope of the project is.

Making your team a part of an early warning system is one of the ultimate steps in dealing with the scope creep issue. If you have such early warning systems in place, you can start making corrections. This starts as an internal process. However, once you figure out the necessary adjustments, you will need to let the client know about them.

The reason why you need to be careful with scope creep is that it can be a slippery slope. Your client might request to do something that falls outside of the work scope one time, and you might agree to it as a favor. But if that happens, the client will most likely ask you to do the same thing again. After all, you did it the last time, so why wouldn't you do it once more?

This is when a simple favor can grow into scope creep and become a real problem. And in the long term, it is a sure way to turn your best clients into the absolute worst clients. Yet, that doesn't mean you should never do favors for your clients.

However, you must make it clear that, should they ask you to do something outside of the agreed work, it is a one-time thing, setting the right
expectation. This can be as simple as saying, "We’re happy to help you out with X this time, although it is outside of our current scope."

That's precisely why you will need to create a dependable system around your delivery process. Then, every time something happens that’s not according to plan, you can adjust a system in place to fix it.

When it comes to eliminating waste in this sense, everything will come down to systems and how you approach them. Whenever possible, make sure that you do not have a single source of error for a particular task. For example, trading companies often adopt the four eyes approach, which means that a second person needs to verify trades that surpass a certain volume.

Mistakes can be extremely costly – people have lost billions of dollars simply due to missing a trade. In essence, you need to have a well-defined workflow with enough redundancies to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. Besides these workflow improvements, you should keep checklists for all of the essentials.

This is a simple technique that many workplaces employ to great effect. Even surgeons have checklists that ensure they've got the right patient ready for the right surgery.

Adopting that mentality into your agency will certainly make a difference for the better when it comes to eliminating waste. Furthermore, it is vital to have benchmarking data that allows you to compare one client to another. This will help you understand which projects were the most successful, and which were not.

Making a comparison between them will allow you to figure out where your efficiencies and inefficiencies lie. Establishing detailed reporting with accurate data can be a powerful tool when it comes to improving your processes. If you get all of that in place, you will be able to turn every mistake or even a crisis situation into an opportunity for your agency to become better.

This aspect is particularly important because identifying problems can be a big issue. Whenever something goes wrong, you might be unsure of whether it was due to an individual mistake or a fault in your processes. In that case, certain mishaps can pass unnoticed and sometimes even become a constant flaw in how your agency operates.

With proper information collecting and data reporting, you can make sure that you are always aware of exactly what happened. Then you can introduce a system that makes it impossible for the same mistake to happen again. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the more complex your services become, the more chance errors will occur.

That's why you should always be wary of creating an over-engineered service with too many moving parts. This kind of approach is precisely what leads to more waste accumulating, causing your processes to become inefficient in the long run.

When creating your systems, always aim for simplicity. When combined with detailed reporting, this will make everything your agency does streamlined and every part of your process easy to revisit and improve.

Without time tracking, certain flaws could go unnoticed for months or years.

These do not necessarily have to be critical mistakes but can be flaws that cause your agency to gain less profit than it should.

In an example from one of our clients, the agency was seemingly working very well.

They were satisfied with how much they were making by the hour, and the agency was always on budget.

However, a quick check of their stats revealed a shocking fact: the agency should've been about five times as profitable as it currently was.

After that discovery, the agency decided to take a closer look at their utilization.

This was something they were not monitoring before.

Instead, the agency considered utilization based on how many hours a day people were working and how many hours they had logged.

The agency's main focus was to ensure everything was within budget, and whenever someone was going out of budget, they would put it down to administrative time.

In this setup, it was no wonder that the agency was hitting their metrics – everyone in the company was trying to game the system, and their overall administrative time was 68%.

In other words, their project time wasn't as high as it should've been.

The solution was to find a system in which everyone's objectives were aligned.

Of course, this couldn't happen overnight.

When you start time tracking and aligning, some fluctuations will inevitably happen before everything evens out. That's exactly what took place in this agency.

Their administrative time went down to between 8% and 15%, which was where they wanted it to be.

However, the project time jumped because people still thought they needed to put in eight hours of work.

However, after the first 100 days, the situation started to even out.

The process was initially somewhat turbulent, but once it settled, the rewards were easily worth it.

This example applies to most agencies. You might be happy with the overall profit margin and the results your agency is currently getting.

But once you start tracking time and working out where most of it is spent, you might find that some marginal processes are sapping profitability.

Time efficiency can help you extrapolate plenty of other data points that could increase efficiency.

For example, suppose you have a high performer within your agency who's spending half of their time on the most profitable activities and the other half on low hourly rate tasks.

In that case, you might want to put someone else on the less profitable jobs to take that burden away from the high performer and effectively double their capacity.

The amount of applications for time tracking is astounding.

One of our clients was able to add over $3.6 million of additional profit by doing a time study and accounting for the inefficiencies. Another client discovered one million dollars of waste with scheduling meetings and attending internal admin meetings.

When you start collecting time data, discovering potential opportunities for improvements, and applying the information gathered through tracking, you will find plenty of ways to make your processes considerably more efficient.

As a result, your agency will be able to deliver consistently and without getting overwhelmed.

You will know how much time goes into getting particular results from every stage of a project.

The bottom line is that time tracking will also help you adjust your pricing so that it reflects the actual amount of work that goes into your deliverables.

All things considered, once you start to track time and analyze it properly, it will be a revolutionary change to how your agency works. And when the benefits start coming in, you will find that the process was worth your while.

Effective Management Leads to Successful Projects

This chapter dealt mostly with the things you can do once you have already established a relationship with a client and started working with them.

However, there is another factor that will decide your success, and that is whether or not you can choose the right clients to work with.

This is a key consideration that you should always keep in mind. You can spend years with the same client, and you will want to make sure that they are the kind of people that will inspire you and drive you forward.

When you choose your clients and start working with them, the overall success of your projects will largely depend on how well you manage them. We have put a lot of emphasis on setting client expectations, and that will continue to play an important role throughout your relationship with them. It is imperative to make it clear what you will be delivering and where the boundaries are.

If you do that right, your clients will know precisely what they will get, and you will reduce the chances of projects getting out of hand due to unrealistic requests and scope creep. You will progress your relationship with clients even further if you pay attention to the fine details.

On the one hand, the client needs to feel appreciated and know that you have their best interest in mind. On the other hand, you will need to learn to say no to certain requests, put a stop to doing recurring extra work outside of the original scope, and ensure that your clients understand when you do them a one-time favor.

From the inside perspective, you will need to set up processes to take care of scope creep, eliminate waste, and make your agency as efficient as
possible. All of these factors go into effective management. And if you can get them right, you will be able to guarantee success with almost every single project.

Hiring the Right People (and How to Set Them Up for Success)

Imagine a new person coming to work at an agency. They go through all the usual stuff – meeting with HR, filling out the necessary paperwork, and all the rest of the motions.

So far, so good. Then, the new employee meets the team member who is going to train them in all of the skills they will need for the job. They spend the first day of the training easing into their new roles and getting a basic grasp of how things work.

Things start getting more serious and much more challenging. The trainer has at most three days to get the employee up to speed. By the end of the week, they are supposed to start working on client deliverables. So the trainer offloads 50 million different things on the newcomer's head.

The training seems a bit tough, but everything still looks alright. And then, day four comes, and the new employee gets to work. And all hell breaks loose. The training wheels are off, and the work starts piling up all around them. All this leaves the employee feeling overwhelmed, and they become painfully aware that they cannot handle it.

By the end of the week, they already feel like they do not understand what they are supposed to do. The very next Monday is gut-wrenching. The new employee is getting ready for five days of struggling, suffering, hair pulling, and feelings of ineptitude.

And while they're toiling beneath the growing frustration, the person who trained them cannot help but feel the same desperation.
This might sound like a horror story, but it is precisely what happens in most agencies when they onboard someone new. Of course, people get better progressively as they learn the processes, expectations, and culture of their workplace.

However, the first one to three months are all but guaranteed to be filled with stress for everyone involved. It is a miserable experience that takes way too much time.

Besides all of the frustration, this common way of onboarding can cost the agency up to $15,000, and that is not even including the new employee's compensation.

Let's imagine a different scenario. Again, we have a new employee who comes in, meets HR, and goes through all those initial steps.

Then, they start training. Now, this person may have some previous experience with the usual onboarding process. So they hunker down and expect a torrent of information to come crashing down on them before they get thrown into the fray.

But that is not what happens. The new employee spends the first week of their training learning about communication, technology, and systems. They get to know everything about how the agency functions and what the expectations are for the job. After that first week, the employee starts feeling uneasy. They have spent all of that time without learning the actual skills that they will need to use.

The following Monday turns out not to be gut-wrenching. The new employee comes into work expecting to find themselves in the eye of the hurricane but is surprised to find a safe work environment.

The first thing they get is an explanation of the five non-negotiables – the five things that define success in their new job. Then, for the next five weeks, they spend each week doing one of those non-negotiable. And they do not only learn how to do them but how to excel at them.

Finally, the training period ends. Rather than an overwhelmed, frustrated employee who doesn't know what to do, the agency welcomes a confident new rockstar to its ranks. The difference between the two approaches is massive. The streamlined, six-week training process results in a person making a decent start.

This new team member will be able to expertly execute on the work; they won’t need someone to hold their hand for months. Also, they typically stay in the positions for much longer and are vastly more successful in the position. The stress and frustration are minimized, and everyone is better at it.

Getting the right training process in place is undoubtedly one of the crucial aspects of onboarding, with another essential part being to choose the right people to hire. In this chapter, we'll explain how to make the best possible decisions in that regard and ensure your agency has a winning team.

Defining Who You Need to Hire

Most agency owners do not start with a clear idea of who they need to hire. In fact, in the majority of cases, agency owners start off solo, and it might take some time before they even begin to consider building a team. However, as your agency grows, the need for hiring new people will
undoubtedly come. You might set out doing marketing, sales, delivery, and everything in between.

And as you take so much ownership over your agency, the idea of bringing someone else in might become a challenge. And yet, it will be necessary at some point.

The question will then become how to determine the right people for the job. And the answer will be in figuring out the four quadrants of all of the things you do within your agency.

The four quadrants consist of:

Your superpower – the thing you are absolutely the best at.
Things you are good at.
Something you can do okay.
Things you cannot do well.

How will these four quadrants help you define who you need to hire? First, you will need to eliminate everything in your superpower. You will
want to keep that thing you are amazing at for yourself. Then, look at the other three quadrants and hire for your weak points.

It might take some time to figure out which activity falls into which quadrant, but once you have the complete list, using it to find the right
people to hire will be much more straightforward. And the process will be that much easier if you follow the five principles of hiring.

The Five Principles of the Right Hire

Hire From the Bottom
The first hires you should make should never be for higher-level functions. Instead, you should start by filling out administrative and support roles. This is because hiring strategists and creative direction people will be a much more challenging process. It will take a lot of time to find people to fill those roles, and they will be the most expensive ones. Essentially either adding an expense that you are not ready to make or delaying a hire that you need until you are drowning. Either way, not a good outcome.
Stop Trying to Replace You
This is a point we have covered in large part when talking about the four quadrants and finding your superpower. However, it is worth mentioning that this superpower is what makes you one of a kind, and that's something you will not be able to replace. But when it comes to activities from other quadrants, you will find that other people can take up those roles. In fact, some might fit into certain positions better than you, and that is something you should view as an advantage. Rather than replacing yourself, focus on finding people who can bring their unique experiences and imagination to expand and improve your agency.
Hire Slow and Fire Fast
While it is important to take your time when considering who to hire, it is equally important not to hold on to certain people for too long. You can do everything right in the hiring process and still find yourself in a situation where the person you have hired turns out to be the wrong choice. If two or more months go by and you see their performance stay at a low level, the best thing to do will be to let that person go. Keeping the wrong employee on board is much like asking for takeout food from a restaurant you didn't like. The food won't get any better – it will only make your refrigerator smell. Whether you feel that keeping that employee is the right thing to do or you are hoping to be proven right, it will become a detriment to your goals.
Identify the Responsibilities
One of the first things you should let your employees know is what their role is and what good performance in that role looks like. People want to be a part of the team, and they want to know that they're doing a good job without being micromanaged all the time. When you show them all of the responsibilities and expectations right from the start, they will understand precisely what they need to do and what goals they should achieve within your processes. You want every employee to have a clear picture of what defines success and failure and be aware of it beyond any doubt.
Understand the Responsibility of Management
When you progress from a solo agency owner into someone managing a team, your responsibilities will change. You will no longer be judged by your individual success. Instead, that will transfer to the success of the team you are managing, and that will entail a great number of things. You will be responsible for managing your employees and their expectations, as well as representing your agency and managing its culture. You will also need to understand your team and communicate with them effectively. As the head manager in your agency, you will have to provide your team with all of the necessary tools to enable them to achieve the best possible results. Finally, and most importantly, make sure that you are inspiring your team and keeping them motivated and energized.

Stop Setting Your People Up for Failure – Learn How to Train

Here we come back with the very point that started this chapter: training.

As evident from our introductory story, the typical method of training and onboarding most often results in frustration and a failure to train new employees properly.

The other method described will all but guarantee superior results in that regard.

However, it is crucial to cover several key aspects of your training process to ensure it is the most effective.

Do not assume that people know anything about your processes. Cover all of the details, including those that seem obvious.
Have standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place and prioritize training on those procedures.
If certain errors start appearing, fall back to the SOPs and retrain. Make sure to do this as soon as you notice an error in order to solidify the right procedures.
Maintain a knowledge bank for easy reference. This will streamline the training process and make it more straightforward.
Do not rely on linear training. Just because new team members have gone through it once doesn't mean the training is done. People usually retain about 70% of what they've learned and forget an additional 10%–15% over time. Always supply resources to fill in those knowledge gaps. Make those resources easily accessible.
Create a clear and repeatable training plan. Ideally, have the process automated to avoid mistakes or crucial points being left behind.

Then, you will need to take your time in selecting the best candidates for specific positions. But that will not be the end of this process you will have to adopt a foolproof method of training your team members to remove the usual stress and frustration and allow them to excel at their job the first day they finish training.

If you get all of this right and manage to put the right people in the right places, your agency will see massive improvements in its processes and delivery. Consequently, this will lead to better client satisfaction and growth.

Consistent Results

There's a car manufacturer based in Florida that does something completely amazing. Their name is Revology Cars, and they build classic Ford Mustang and Shelby models, ranging from the 1966 to 1968 series. But those cars are classic only at first sight. Revology takes the well-known and loved shapes of the cars and places an entirely modern machine underneath.

This means that their 1966 Mustang drives more like a contemporary sports car than an old-timer. However, that's not all. The cars produced by this company are highly customizable. Every vehicle that comes out of Revology is unique, and the customer can choose between several options for almost every element of the car.

You can order a Revology Mustang with manual or automatic gear shifting, in custom colors, with unique wheels, dash, wheel, seat covers, carpets, and loads of other options. All this sounds impressive and like a dream come true for classic Ford aficionados.

However, there are limits to what you can get from Revology. For instance, if you'd come to their store and say you'd like a '62 Corvette (beautiful car), the answer would be that the company doesn't make those. In fact, if you would ask for a 1969 Mustang, the reply would be the same. You see, while the cars Revology puts out are fantastically customizable, their process is not.

The process is rock-solid and highly standardized, and everyone who wants to buy a Revology car knows exactly what they can get. This is a crucial aspect of the company; they will work wonders for their clients and produce 1966–1968 Mustang and Shelby models that are one of a kind. But that's where they will draw the line.

No one can get a car from Revology for which they do not have a process – the company simply will not do it. This is because the company has an established process and a repeatable service that allows them to get consistent results every time. And you can achieve the same within your agency by following certain key guidelines, which we'll explore in this chapter.

How to Create Consistent Results

"If you want to impress people, make things complicated.
If you want to help them, keep it simple."
– Frank Kern

Creating an environment that allows for consistent results is always a step in the right direction. When your clients know that they can expect you to deliver your services with the same level of quality, they will always be eager to work with your agency.

Furthermore, consistent results lead to overall happier clients. This, in turn, leads to repeat revenue. In other words, once you establish that consistency, you will be able to produce the best results every time and allow your agency to grow unhindered. Before we get into a detailed explanation of what your process should consist of, there's one point we need to clarify.

Creatives often have an objection when it comes to the ideas of process and repetition. In particular, they fear that focusing on those aspects will take away from the creativity in their agency. However, that fear is unfounded.

To put it simply, it’s not an either/or proposition. Achieving process and repetition doesn’t mean that creativity has to be sacrificed or sidelined. When done right, your agency can create a productive synergy between these seemingly oppositional goals.

Having a consistent, repeatable process streamlines the logistical and administrative burden of your business processes – thus creating more space for creativity, innovation, improvisation, and exploration.

In an ideal scenario, you achieve the best of both worlds.

You will be able to consistently provide your clients with the results they need, rather than placing your faith in unpredictable flashes of creative genius.

Creativity will always stay at the core of your agency – the process will simply make it easier to deliver your creative work in the most satisfying way for your clients.

Here are the essential steps to follow if you want to create consistent results that enhance your agency’s creative potential:

1. Productize Your Services

Productizing your services means having service packages that function in a very specific way to help your clients accomplish their goals. You will only be able to do this if you cover all of the basics concerning your service:

Ensure it is something that your target demographic really needs.
Know and deliver that service exceptionally well.
Create a service that drives results.
Have an intricate understanding of the process behind delivering your service.

Today's agency space is absolutely bombarded with people who have nothing more than a laptop. They watch a couple of YouTube videos and
get convinced that they suddenly know how to run Facebook ads or do SEO. Those people get out into the market certain that they've become digital ad buyers, and this completely destroys the industry.

Making prospects mistrust the next agency they encounter, making it harder to help them. The fact of the matter is that you need to be an expert in what you are talking about. You must know what you are doing inside out to generate results. This is the basic foundation for scaling.

It is also the main reason why so many agencies fail at delivering results. They try to be everything to everyone only to get new leads and clients.
Then, they push themselves into doing projects that they've never done before and hope that they will learn it along the way, ironing out (inevitable) unexpected setbacks as they go.

The issue is that entire agencies continue to grow on that foundation, becoming generalists that cannot deliver value consistently. If you want to grow your agency in a better way, you need to decide what your primary service is before you start offering it. Then, you should tell people exactly what it is that you do, as well as what you do not do. Furthermore, you should ensure that you are delivering your service in one fashion.

You might have different package types, but they should be based on the same set of things you can do effectively. This approach will affect how well you can scale your agency, how much time you are focusing on delivering, and the amount of work that you need to do with each client.

More than that, it will affect your client satisfaction and retention and your ability to sell. Productize your services, and it will define your business in many ways.

2. Build a Repeatable Process

This step might sound simple. If you want your agency to scale, you need a process that's scalable.

Think about the Revology company we have talked about in the
introduction. They create unique, custom products through a process that obviously doesn't allow them to serve everyone on the planet.

That company couldn't make a million cars within a year because it would take too much time and resources.

However, their strength lies in a repeatable process that produces the same level of results every time. That's precisely what your agency needs.

You should have a package that's plug-and-play. There might be slight variations from one client to the other, but those will be limited to changing one piece of your offer for another.

In those cases, all you will need to do will be simple transfers that will remain within your scope.

You can create different packages inside of your repeatable process by making templates that can be layered on top of each other. For example, you can have package A which has a particular list of services. Then, you have package B that covers everything from A and layers some extra services on top of it.

Finally, your package C could include both A and B, along with another layer of other services. The main advantage of this approach is that you will be able to offer different options to your clients without adding too much complexity to your processes.

Automation can be of great help in this regard. There's so much technology today that you can leverage to get different parts of your process to fire in an instant, saving plenty of time and ensuring repeatable results.

3. Be Iterative

Being iterative goes back to the point we raised in the previous chapter, and it is about adjusting your process to account for potential errors. This is a change that you can introduce on a system level whenever a mistake happens within your process or when a particular area could be improved for better performance.

Ensuring that your processes are iterative will allow you to optimize everything for the future. This is something to keep in mind when you start building your processes. They need to be flexible enough so that certain
parts can be adjusted without rebuilding the process from scratch.

Of course, new technology can be a great asset when it comes to improvements, and so can the ideas that come from your team. Team members will often have ground knowledge and valuable insight that comes from it. That's why you should always consult your team when deciding on which changes to introduce.

When we talk about being iterative, you should bear in mind that the principle also applies to your standard operating practices. Being able to adapt your SOPs to new circumstances will play a significant role in producing results more consistently.

4. Understand That There's Comfort in Data

Creativity might be the driving force behind your agency, but it is important to accept that it has its limits. This is especially true when it comes to standardizing your services and deliverables and tracking various metrics for efficiency.

People in the creative industry can get used to making decisions based on instinct. However, while that instinct may prove true or false, numbers never lie. In other words, it is useful to have certainty through data. It is much easier to make decisions when you have empirical data on things like time management, client satisfaction, efficiency, or other metrics.

This is precisely why it is important to acknowledge the limitations of creativity and put your trust in data when making improvements or adjustments to your systems. Everything that affects how you deliver your service or the results for your clients and agency should be based on data; every good creative knows the value of instincts and feelings, but acknowledging that even these have limits is critical to success.

While this seems understandable on its own, many people believe that they already know everything they need to know and think they do not have to research relevant information. Making a gut decision will more likely leave you awake at night, wondering whether you did the right thing.

But if you make decisions based on information, data, and knowledge, you will feel much more comfortable.

5. Cool Doesn't Matter if It Doesn't Sell

Abandoned showrooms and basements are full of cool ideas that nobody wants to buy. And this is not something limited to small inventions. Industry giants can often mistake cool for salable. Back in 2004, the Coca-Cola company tried to enter the U.K. market with their bottled water brand, Dasani. This brand has been wildly successful so far. In fact, Dasani is still the second-best bottled water in the world regarding sales.

With a product that's performed that well, Coca-Cola didn't have any doubts about its success in the British market. They introduced Dasani with all of the fanfare and promotional bells and whistles you could imagine, with the company backing up the marketing campaign with millions of pounds.

But the British public wasn't impressed. The initial reception was lukewarm, and it grew colder after certain facts about Dasani water came out.

Coca-Cola's bottled water turned out not to be sourced from a natural spring. It was actually purified tap water.

Despite all of the cool marketing and branding, as well as one of the world's largest companies providing ample support for their product, Dasani failed to sell in the U.K.

It took no more than a few weeks for the bottled water to be recalled, never to return to the British Isles.

This is just one example that shows that people aren't willing to stick with a product or service if it doesn't work for them.

6. Remove Subjectivity and Track Everything

If you want to ensure that your processes are repeatable and provide consistent results, it would be best to leave nothing open to interpretation or chance.

The way you structure processes within your agency should be as objective as possible.

Once you establish those, tracking all relevant metrics will help you determine efficiency and opportunities for improvements.

When it comes to making repeatable processes, checklists can be a surprisingly effective tool.

In fact, hospitals in the U.S. famously use checklists for various scenarios, from regular maintenance and standard procedures to responding to infection outbreaks.

Using checklists to back up your processes will ensure that you get the same results every time because you will need to perform the same actions to tick each box. Additionally, having a visual representation of the process will help you better organize time and individual responsibilities.

To further expand on the objectiveness and repeatability, you should document your standard operating procedures. SOPs should describe every step within a particular procedure to allow your team to deliver results in the same way.
As you want to document your SOPs in the most understandable way possible, follow this three-part outline when writing them down:

Start with a description outlining the SOP in broader terms.
Layout the instructions for specific steps and actions that go into the procedure.
List the references and additional material that could be of further use.

Document the SOPs so that they're clear and understandable, and do not forget to update them whenever significant changes are introduced. Keeping your SOPs concise and updated will be of great help for your team, both in terms of repeatable results and when it comes to onboarding new members.

Once you get the system in place, you should track everything to get the most extensive data on the effectiveness of your processes. Here, technology will be key.

7. Building Knowledge

You can leverage technology to great advantage in various areas like automation, information transference, communicating with clients, generating results, and reliable reporting.

Agency owners often spend too much time doing agency work without paying attention to new solutions constantly coming up in the industry.

Unfortunately, this can mean that pieces of technology that could be crucial for your agency are going unnoticed.

If you want to stay on top of novel solutions, one of the best ways to do so would be to talk about it with other people in your industry.

There's a misguided mindset that, just because agencies are in the same industry, they have to act like competitors and foster a kind of "frenemies" relationship.

You should definitely remove this mindset and start connecting with other agency owners and people who share your space. There are 320,000+ creative and marketing agencies in the U.S. alone and millions of potential clients. There's no reason to think that you and other agency owners are stepping on each other's toes.

In fact, from our experience working with countless clients on countless pitches, we have only ever encountered clients pitching the same client twice. It would be best to establish and grow your relationships so that you can learn about new tools, technology, and ways to innovate. These interactions will prove priceless when it comes to improving the way your agency works.

Set Yourself Up for Success

In terms of delivering results, consistency will be paramount. Learning how to set up your processes to get the same results every single time will be one of the most valuable things for the future of your agency.

It cannot be overstated how important it is to make your delivery repeatable. While individual projects will always be somewhat different, you will be able to account for those variations much easier when you have an established way of doing things.

Many aspects of your agency will depend on consistent delivery. With well established, repeatable processes, you will have a better grasp of the scope of projects. You will have a clear outline of what results your agency can produce and everything that goes into getting those results.

Setting clear client expectations improves satisfaction, making it easier to grow your agency. And once that starts happening, you will have no problems scaling your processes because you have established them the right way.

This brings us to the end of this book.

You now know a bit more about who we are, what we do, and what our goals are. Namely, we want to help you succeed in the fastest way possible. That's why, chapter by chapter, we went through the three critical aspects of creating an efficient and profitable agency. First, you learned what it takes to attract the right clients by selecting your niche, specializing, and marketing in the most effective way.

For the second aspect, we moved on to converting prospects into clients and described the complete sales process. This included everything from determining which type of salesperson you are, through the discovery calls, to mastering the art of the close. Finally, we looked at ways to ensure your delivery is always top-quality with fantastic, repeatable results that will help you retain plenty of satisfied clients.

Now, all that's left is for you to start adopting the right mindset that will drive your agency to success. All of the key factors are clear, and they're ready for you to use them. Of course, building up your agency will take time, much planning, and careful deliberation. But then, the best things in life often do.

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Delivering Amazing Results

Client and Project Management

Framing Your Client’s Expectations

Helping Clients Understand Your Processes

Defining Communication Expectations

Create a White Glove Service

Learn to Say No

Scope Creep Management

Eliminating Waste

Track Your Time

Effective Management Leads to Successful Projects