Every week, Drew records another video on a topic that has come up in his conversations with agency owners. You can view them chronologically (most recent on top) by different categories, or you can search for specific key words.
This Week’s Video
What does an hour cost? – Agency Management Tip for Owners
We don't talk as much as we should about what an hour costs our agency. Maybe that will help inspire you to look at raising your rates. So the poor man's way of figuring that out is you need four numbers. Number of hours, number of employees, total salary cost, and your overhead cost. Full Transcripts »
Internal growth goals – Agency Management Tip for Owners
We believe that every agency employee should have a growth goal for every quarter. What we mean by that is that they should get better at something, they should learn something new, they should add to a skill set. They should invest in themselves to be better for themselves, the agency, and the clients. The first one is what am I going to learn that's going to benefit me? I'm going to get certified in Google AdWords. I'm going to take a presentation in class, or take an online webinar on how to use AI to take better notes, whatever it may be. Number two, what is my growth goal in terms of serving our clients better? So that might be that I'm going to sit in on a sales meeting for a client to learn more about their objectives and learn what the salespeople hear when they're on the road. Or I'm going to go to a part of a trade show day with a client and sit in their booth and listen. And then the third one is how am I going to get better? How am I going to grow to benefit the agency? So that might be I'm going to write an extra blog post for the agency. How am I going to help the agency grow? I'm going to contribute to our thought leadership. I will start spending time on LinkedIn, sharing and liking my colleagues’, my coworkers’, and my clients’ posts. Watch »
Breathe – Agency Management Tip for Owners
One of the ways we can help our team, but we can also help ourselves is to think about what we need to do to ease some of that stress, ease some of that unrest, and give ourselves literally and figuratively, some breathing room. Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute, offers a weekly agency management tip to agency owners. Watch »
Recoup your professional development investment – Agency Management Tip for Owners
Here's a simple but effective way to make sure your agency really benefits from the professional development dollars you spend on your team. Watch »
What’s your agency’s sustainability program? – Agency Management Tip for Owners
What's going on in terms of your own internal education program? Your own sustainability program around helping everyone on the team get smarter and better? Watch »
Your clients want more face time – Agency Management Tip for Owners
In the 2023 Agency Edge research project, we asked CMOs and VP of marketing “Would you like to spend more time with the agency owner or the leadership level folks?” And what they said was it was a 1-2 punch. They not only wanted to spend more time with you, but they wanted to do it when they could be away from their daily work, trade shows, conferences, things like that, places where they've already sort of carved out their calendar to focus on bigger picture planning, strategy kinds of things are not in their office, are not running from meeting to meeting. They're not distracted. And number two is also one of the places where they were most likely to be excited about new ideas and new budget. So if you serve clients who are in an industry where there are great trade shows, conferences, continuing ed credit events, things like that, that's a great place for you to invest your time and energy is to be there with your clients. Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute, offers a weekly agency management tip to agency owners. Watch »
Beat the financial odds – Agency Management Tip for Owners
2023 was a brutal year on the new business front for most agencies. But, we had a group of agencies that beat the odds. How did they do that? They did that by running their agency by the numbers. They did not allow emotion. They did not allow discouragement. They did not allow fatigue to take their eye off the numbers that told them exactly how to run a profitable business. Now, if you're saying, what are those numbers, you're not alone. A lot of agency owners aren't familiar with agency math. They don't understand what AGI is and isn't. They don't understand 55, 25, 20. And what that metric means. And they don't understand that no matter how tough the year is, no matter how challenging your biggest client is, no matter what kind of staff attrition you have, if you run your business by the numbers, you can be profitable every single time. Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute, offers a weekly agency management tip to agency owners. Watch »
Don’t give away the farm – Agency Management Tip for Owners
It is very dangerous to create bonus programs for individuals (as opposed to the entire team) inside your organization. And it's dangerous because a little bit here and a little bit there eat away at the profit that you make. Most of you have not really cemented the fact with your account service people that it's actually their job. It's what they get paid to do. Grow their book of business. An AE should be able to grow their book of business by 10% a year. So whether it's a client or five clients, let's say they're managing on January 1st, half a million dollars of AGI, that half a million dollars should grow because they're doing their job to $550,000 of AGI by the end of the year. You should not give them a bonus for simply doing their job. But if you are going to create a bonus program for account service people or for anybody in your organization, you really have to do the math. You need to make sure you don't eat through all of the profit of whatever the agency grew or gained by this person's efforts. Drew McLellan, CEO of Agency Management Institute, offers a weekly agency management tip to agency owners. Watch »
Profitability by client – Agency Management Tip for Owners
If you're not making at least 10% profit on a client, you have to ask yourself, why are these people why is this business still a clients? Now, there may be reasons why an unprofitable client — even a client that you're paying for the privilege of doing the work — is worth keeping. They may be a great referral source. But you have to make that decision consciously. You have to be intentional about that decision. And, by the way, and I know this is not going to surprise you, they can't all be less than 10% profit. So profitability by client by month, by quarter, and annually. Watch »
Unreimbursed Partner Expenses – Agency Management Tip for Owners
Let's talk about unreimbursed partnership expenses. An unreimbursed partnership expense are expenses that you pay for out of your personal pocket that you don't get reimbursed for. Let's say you're a start-up, or let's say you've had a tough year and you couldn't run all those pass-throughs through the business like normal. You still can take a tax advantage. The way it works is, first of all, this has to be covered in your operating agreement between your partner, in your partnership, or in your S Corp if you are a sole owner. Watch »
