Articles on growing an agency: pricing, hiring, referrals, case studies, the leadership team and the quarterly review, by Felix Velarde.
In 2007 we showed Virgin Holidays every pound in returned twenty-six. The budget doubled. AI now asks every agency a blunt question. Efficiency is no answer.
Take inflation, wage inflation and one lost client off a 20 per cent growth target and the agency ends the year where it started. Two years, three times.
Your senior leadership team was hired to preserve what exists. Growth is a different job, done by a Growth Lab team drawn from every level of the business.
The charisma that gets an agency to its first million teaches the team to wait to be fed. Past two or three million that becomes a ceiling, felt as stress.
Good team, strong clients, four case studies on the website, the newest from 2022. One short case study a month roughly doubled contact page conversion.
All ten of an agency's last clients came through the founder personally. Nine months later, 40 per cent of new business came through channels without him.
Three clients left in eight weeks with no complaints and high survey scores. The work had drifted into maintenance. Nobody had done anything wrong.
A head of new business produced nothing in six months. The proposition could have described any mid-size agency. The next hire closed two clients in a quarter.
An agency's first real quarterly review found designers at 115 per cent utilisation and the biggest service line the least profitable. Half an hour of clarity.
Her new business came from referrals and she had no idea which clients sent them or why. A referral practice is a habit: know your advocates and ask.
Day rates unchanged since 2020 meant the agency cut its price by RPI every year while clients raised theirs. Raise prices annually, without apologising.
Two days in a country house produced a fifty-six-page strategy nobody could recall by January. Agencies that execute commit to fewer things, not tidier ones.
Strategy days produced plans nobody executed. A small team of future leaders who research, design and pilot the changes themselves changed the execution rate.
I once built a service line in a month and buried it in three. The method I use now is slow at the front: research, small pilot, then roll-out.
A very wide-ranging interview by best selling author Minter Dial in which Felix discusses his values, the state of the agency industry, the science behind – and methods for – scaling, the mechanics of profit growth, goal setting and much more.
Exploring how leadership procrastination on major business decisions can be overcome by answering five key questions, emphasizing that effective leadership requires making decisive choices even when faced with uncertainty.
Agencies can achieve greater success and value by identifying and focusing exclusively on a specialised niche where they can be the best, rather than trying to compete as a generalist against thousands of similar firms.
If you’re serious about building significant value, preparing for an exit, or executing a roll-up strategy, get in touch below. I’ll respond personally.
