TL;DR

• There's a massive gap between the top agencies and everyone else.
• The top agencies tend to share a few common threads: an almost magic ability to close deals, seasoned leadership teams, sophisticated strategies and operations, they operate in the future, and they have a relentless focus on what's truly important.
• It's definitely possible to become a top agency, but it takes a ton of work and a bit of luck.
• The good news is there's space to fill, but be careful that you're chasing what you actually want to catch. Most owners don't need to run a top agency to achieve their goals.
• Finally - I'm booking new agency consulting clients for the end of April. Reach out if you'd like to chat about some strategy help. The Revgen Review Service has been a huge hit lately.

​

The Wide Agency Divide

There’s a wide divide between the top agencies and everyone else.

First, let’s define a “top agency.”

Think of it as the 80:20 rule, but shift it to the 99:1 rule. That top 1% is who I’m referring to and even that’s probably too generous.

They’re the tiny group of agencies that operate on another level entirely.

These aren’t the biggest. They aren’t necessarily growing the fastest, and they’re not even the most profitable. What they are is effective.

Their revgen strategies and systems have been perfected. Their leadership has been there before. Their overall sophistication level is stunning. They operate more than a few steps ahead of the rest of the industry. They understand what’s important and have an uncanny ability to deeply focus on it.

The top agencies are those that succeed in delivering on the owner’s goals.

This includes their ability to choose how much (or little) to work in the business, who they work with, what they do, and how long to keep doing what they’re doing.

Let’s take a look at what they have in common.

​

Sales

The most common thread among the top agencies is an almost magical ability to close new deals. While other agencies jump from tactic to tactic with middling success, the top ones have homed in on a sales flow that delivers results.

The weird thing is that many have underdeveloped regen components. Growth has come almost too easily to them. I’ve come across a few now that have middling account management programs, almost non-existent marketing, but stellar sales and bizdev.

Apparently, you don’t need to do everything right as long as your salespeople can absolutely crush it.

​

Seasoned leadership

Many of the best agencies I’ve had the pleasure of working with have incredibly seasoned leadership teams in place. These are people who’ve run their own successful agencies and who are now working in a focused role to build something even greater.

Teams like this are just plain good. They’ve seen the view from the top. This helps them make better decisions because they can easily take the rest of the organization into account. They also know where the pain points lurk and how to handle them. Finally, their networks are expansive. If they don’t know how to accomplish something, they’ll know someone who does.

​

Sophistication

With that seasoned leadership comes an almost religious devotion to efficiency, metrics, and a full understanding of the best practices necessary to keep their good thing going.

On the metrics front, they don’t have some enormously detailed dashboard, but they do know their core metrics like the back of their hand.

Their operations are similar. They only focus on installing policies when absolutely necessary. They’re logical additions, and they weigh the added bureaucracy against the perceived benefits. There’s extraordinarily little “because that’s how it’s always done” at these kinds of shops.

​

More than a step ahead

The leadership teams at the top shops are operating in the future. The challenges they’re solving sound almost sci-fi-esque. They don’t discuss “The benefits of SEO” or “Improving page speed.” Those are components. They’re focused on solving the major weighty challenges that plague the Fortune 50. This results in combinations of design, development, and marketing that simply outclass the work of other agencies.

​

Focusing on the signal

Some of this comes with experience, but the ability to focus on what’s truly important is a superpower. Identifying the signal, filtering out the noise, and maintaining that focus allows leadership teams at the top agencies to make dramatic progress in a short amount of time.

​

Becoming a top agency

The sales thing is tough. You can cheat it with some strategy and structure, but nothing really replaces a motivated, well-resourced, and natural salesperson leading the charge.

Seasoned leadership is more obtainable once you reach a certain size. You need the cashflow to compensate them, but more importantly, you need something interesting for them to work on. You’re selling the vision here.

Sophistication is another one that’s relatively easy to solve. I’d argue that you should already be motivated to learn the ins and outs of how your shop works, but those unknown unknowns can be tough. Some quality agency management software and an ops consultant are great ways to level this up.

Operating in the future is harder than it sounds. It’s more than just buying an Apple Vision Pro and making a few apps. That’s a waste of time if you’re not solving something for a deep-pocketed buyer. There’s a chicken-egg issue that filters most agency teams out of this. To effectively create cutting-edge work, you need someone who wants to buy it. The buyers of truly cutting-edge work mostly already know who can deliver it. Funding your agency while demonstrating your capabilities here can be tough. This is why it’s critical to build a solid foundation first.

Finally, maintaining focus gets into a whole discussion of roles, goals, and identifying effective tactics. Again, most of this comes from experience. Learning which metrics matter for specific roles, the goals that align incentives with the proper outcomes, and gaining an internal barometer for effective tactics are all things leaders pick up along the way. They typically learn them by making a bunch of other mistakes first.

​

Here’s the good news

I can’t think of a single agency that has all of those components.

Everyone’s dealing with fixing something. Whether it’s their sales/revgen, growth strategy, ops challenges, or people/personality challenges. Some of the biggest shops out there are an absolute mess in some respects.

They also tend to have blind spots. Some are on purpose, but that alone shouldn’t make them uninteresting. Some obscure subsector that’s nowhere near large enough to be attractive to a massive agency could be the perfect place for you to gain a foothold.

The trick is to find the gaps.

There’s so much demand from brands that there are a ton of underserved gaps in the marketplace. It’s why your industry has been able to grow so significantly over the last decade+.

​

Chase only what you want to catch

Finally, most agency owners don’t actually need to run “the best agency ever” to achieve their goals.

​I mentioned this before, but when I ask owners, “Why do you want to grow?” most of them list reasons that don’t require being the best. Like providing a stable environment for their team to do great work. Or, growing just large enough to make their day-to-day contribution redundant.

Neither of those, or any versions of them, requires you to run a top agency. It’s possible, if you want it, but be careful about chasing after something you’re not really into.

​

Until next time!

-Nick

​