TL;DR

• Most revgen strategies exist scattered across a bunch of Google docs with no single source of strategic truth to refer back to.
• This creates friction, which slows growth and reduces profitability.
• Creating a doc to house high-level summaries of the components of your revgen strategy allows you to check new ideas (shiny objects) against it effectively.
• The time your leadership devotes to strategy work will change as your agency grows, with larger shops generally spending more time than smaller shops.
• We talk about how this impacts agency valuations in the latest episode of Agency Chats with Productive.
• I’m chatting about agency industry shifts with John Amold and Celarity next week.

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The latest episode of Agency Chats is live!

This newsletter adds context to our latest Agency Chats episode we did with Productive about how revgen strategies and systems impact agency valuations.

• ​Episode One: Series Introduction​
• ​Episode Two: Leadership & Management​
• ​Episode Three: Revgen Strategies & Systems​

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The Most Common Revgen Issue

You need a single source of strategic truth.

Since launching the Revgen Review Service in January, I’ve had the privilege of helping a bunch of agency leaders diagnose and improve their revgen strategies. From small 10-person shops that simply needed a bit of guidance to 400 FTE agencies that were already dominating certain areas but needed a clear roadmap for future growth.

It’s been fascinating to dive deep into how they think about growth, the structure they’ve created to enable it, and the tactics they implement that actually work.

While each of them had some revgen components dialed in, I haven’t seen a single one that’s had a detailed single source of strategic truth.

Their revgen strategies exist across a bunch of scattered Google docs, within individual employee’s minds, or not at all.

This increased entropy adds friction to the system and increases the ability of shiny objects to sap focus. Left unchecked, this lack of alignment results in slower, less profitable growth.

Fixing this tends to unlock that “next step” in growth for agencies who’ve been stuck at a certain level for a while.

I guess I just gave away my big value-add…

DIY this whole thing and get yourself something nice with the $4,700 you would have given me. Here’s how:

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Revgen Strategy Structure

I won’t spend a ton of time on this, but it’s helpful to understand what all goes into a revgen strategy and how it’s structured.

At the very base is the vision for the agency. You gotta know wtf you’re building. This might be the second most common issue I see. I have an old newsletter discussing doing this correctly vs. the standard way that doesn’t work.

Once you have the vision down, you can build out your goals, positioning, pricing methods & levels, channels, tactics, and implementation plan.

This is the part that’s scattered across a million Google docs, if they’re consciously addressed at all.

That happens because the work is divided among various departments and individuals across the agency.

Then, when someone goes, “Hey, we should do cold outreach,” there isn’t an easy way to evaluate that idea.

The single source of truth is missing, so it becomes a debate, and debates aren’t necessarily won by who’s right.

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Components of Your Single Source of Strategic Truth

Functionally, I love Google docs for storing your SSoST. It makes it simple to have a summary doc, and link out to detail docs as needed. As long as this summary doc is updated whenever the sub-docs are, leadership and management should be able to check new ideas against it easily.

I recommend keeping the doc itself as simple as possible. Get the high-level core ideas across for each section and link out for more detailed explanations of each.

Here’s what I include in them:

• Your mission/vision/goals.
• High-level summaries of the research you’ve done to inform your strategy.
• Positioning details
• Industry focus
• Ideal service mix
• Buyer/ICP descriptions, trusted sources, hangout locations, and pain points
• Messaging pillars
• Channels and tactics
• Pricing methodology and levels
• Implementation plan
• Goals and milestones
• Roles and responsibilities
• Prioritization schedule
• Financial model and sensitivity analysis
• Key risks
• Metrics, pivot points, and contingency plans

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Devoting Time to Strategy Work

That’s a lot to think through.

Leaders need to balance the strategy development with actually growing the agency.

Here’s a rough idea of the percent of time your leadership team should spend on strategy work vs. your agency’s size (FTE = Full-time Employees). Keep in mind that these are general guidelines, not rigid rules.

• <10 FTEs – <10%. Spending time out in the marketplace selling will give you infinitely more value than designing the perfect strategy. Have an idea of where you’d like to end up, but use what you learn from the market to design and refine your strategy as you go.
• 10-24 FTEs – 10-20%. Here’s where you need to start developing a “why” to back up your tactics. One of the big bumps in the transition from this size to the next is a lack of tactic support and a thinning of resources-per-tactic. Having a “why” for every revgen tactic you employ alleviates this.
• 25-49 FTEs – 20-40%. Now, things are getting a bit tough. What worked before doesn’t work now. Your competitors are suddenly a LOT more sophisticated. Mistakes here come with real punishment.
• >= 50 FTEs – >50%. Remember, this is for your leadership team. At this point, your C-levels, VPs, and even most Directors shouldn’t be touching production. They’ll all have multiple direct reports who are specialized. Leadership days should be spent aiming these direct reports in the right direction.

This tracks with the agency owner's billable vs. non-billable hours data from our Salary Report. I’d argue that those billable hours are still too high, though.

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Feel Free to Reach Out

Hopefully, this helps you put some structure around how you think about revgen at your agency.

There’s a ton of nuance here, but just about any shop can benefit from writing down their revgen strategy.

As always, if you have any questions or want help growing your agency, simply reply to this email, and we can set up a time to chat.

Until next time!

-Nick

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