TL;DR

• The 2024 Digital Services Salary Guide is live! Participants got their copy last week, you can get yours today! Use code --- to take $95 off the final price.
• The Bureau of Digital is doing a quick 2-question check on sales trends at digital shops.
• A good revgen strategy should make success the default. It should almost become inevitable.
• The three most common challenges I see agencies face are: a lack of vision, clear roles/goals/responsibilities for the revgen team, and deep expertise in a few channels and tactics.
• Revgen systems should be elegant. Each component should work together with the others to raise everyone up.
• I designed a new service to help agency leaders identify gaps in their growth strategies and revgen systems. This helps leaders prioritize their teams for the greatest impact. It takes two weeks from kickoff to results.

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First, the Digital Services Salary Guide 2024 is Live!

Gain insights on average agency salaries by position, how compensation packages are changing, average benefits, and more!

• How agency compensation rates and packages are shifting
• Raises in 2023 and expected raises in 2024
• Changes in non-salary compensation (bonuses, profit sharing, etc.)
• Actual salary bands for: Account management roles, Business development and sales roles, Design roles, Dev roles, Project management roles, Marketing roles (both internal and client-facing), and Agency operations roles
• Billable and non-billable weekly hours by functional group
• Standard PTO practices
• Average benefits provided
• Agency owner salaries, draws, and bonuses

Participants got their copy last week, you can get yours today! Use code --- to take $95 off the final price.

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Architecture & Agencies

I’m a bit of an architecture nerd. Before I went down the strange path of plumbing to physics to finance to agency consulting, I seriously considered a career as an architect. I spent a lot of my free time drawing floor plans and elevations, and I kept an extensive swipe file of home layouts and styles. I’ve always been interested in how impactful form and space can be.

Last weekend, I was watching Steven Harris walk through his Bedford Quarry House and describe the thought process behind many of his design decisions. He described the importance of the approach, the transition of space, and the sense of stability they achieved while being perched above a quarry.

Those decisions resulted in the creation of an impressive place. One that blended beautifully into its environment.

How he summed up his goals for a project really stuck with me.

Steven said that his greatest ambition for a project is for it to appear effortless and inevitable.

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Effortless & Inevitable

In a sign I’ve been working too much, hearing those words made me instantly think about my work with agencies, specifically with their revgen strategies and systems.

How would I sum up what I do for clients?

It sure as hell wouldn’t be “effortless.”

I love that word to describe a structure, but it doesn’t fit for an agency. It takes work to build reliable growth. That work also needs to be consistent.

While “effortless” didn’t fit, “inevitable” might. It made me wonder, what’s the default of a system? What’s the base-state that the typical agency’s revgen system reverts to? It’s normally a bunch of heroic work from agency owners/leaders to drum up new business when the pipeline dries up.

That inevitable base-state isn’t ideal.

A lot of my work revolves around changing that base-state. Improving it. Putting strategies and structure in place to make success the default.

If I let my hubris take over, I’d say I try to “make success inevitable”

Success in this instance is reliable agency growth through a repeatable revgen system.

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Making Success Inevitable

In a lot of meetings lately, agency leaders have asked, “What’s the most common challenge you see at agencies like ours?” It’s almost always related to one of these three areas: vision, roles/goals/responsibility, or revgen strategy/channel expertise. Let’s dive into them and run through how I address each.

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Vision

First up, vision. What are you trying to build? Sometimes, answering that question can be harder than it seems.

A major part of creating a growth base-state is defining and communicating the vision for the agency.

Doing that acts as a decision-check for everyone downstream. It helps answer questions like:

Should we niche down into only serving higher-ed clients?

Should we offer AI-assisted content creation to clients?

Should we optimize for growth or margins?

A clear picture of what you’re trying to build lets your team understand if their actions are taking the firm closer or farther away from that vision.

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Roles/goals/responsibilities

The second major challenge I see is a lack of crystal-clear roles, goals, and responsibilities for everyone involved in revgen.

It’s impossible to set a strategy and structure without clear roles. It’s impossible to track progress without goals that they’re supposed to achieve. It’s impossible for your team to prioritize their day-to-day when it isn’t clear who’s responsible for what.

This is too deep of a topic for a newsletter, so feel free to check out page-33 of my Repeatable Revgen Guide for more details.

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Channel expertise

The third most common issue is a lack of deep expertise in a few key channels and tactics.

One of the first questions I ask in my interviews with managers is: “What have you tried before, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and why not?”

Almost without fail, I get a list of various sales and marketing tactics that were underfunded, understaffed, or tried for less than a month. Sometimes, all three.

Different channels and tactics will have various ROIs based on things like your service mix, target buyer, pricing, and overall positioning.

You can dramatically improve your agency’s base-state by developing a deep level of expertise in the channels and tactics that are appropriate for your situation.

It’s important to push past the point when things get difficult. Most of the channels you’ll try have already been highly developed by other agencies. The level of sophistication required to be successful has risen across the board.

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Those are the three most common challenges I see that take away from success being the base-state. Fixing those would get the typical agency most of the way to success being inevitable.

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Elegant Systems

Beyond inevitable, there’s another word I’d use to describe the strategies and systems I design.

I try to make them elegant.

Everything that’s put in place should have a reason for existing. From the people hired to the actions they take. Everything should be in support of the agency’s goals.

In an elegant system, each function supports the others.

Business developers can create partnerships that expand marketing’s reach, pre-warm sales leads, or add cross-sales / up-sales opportunities for account managers.

Sales is in a unique position to understand the market. They’re in almost constant communication with your target buyers. The information they uncover can be invaluable to marketing, account management, and business development teams (let alone leadership and strategy).

Marketing can ensure that the messaging that the entire organization is using connects with your ideal buyers. Their content can act like a force multiplier for the other functions and make each of their jobs easier.

Account managers know your clients better than anyone. They can work with marketing to refine ideal client profiles, help sales with pain point context, or flag service opportunities to business developers.

When agencies adopt supportive strategies and systems, the entire organization takes on a kind of elegance. Revgen just works, and when it doesn't, it’s easier to determine why.

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Elegant & Inevitable

If I had to sum it all up, my goal is to create elegant revgen systems and inevitable growth strategies for digital agencies.

I developed a new service to help agency leaders identify gaps in their growth strategies and revgen systems. This helps leaders prioritize their teams for the greatest impact. It's $4,200, and it takes two weeks from kickoff to results. Click the link and check out the details. If it's something that could help, reach out and we'll get started.

Until next time,

-Nick