Newsletter #22: Final Thoughts on Client Management

If you look into the previous three editions, they were contributed by the Managing Director at Belkins, Mr. Alex Sribnyi.

Like Bob Ross putting the final touches, I'd like to compliment Alex with a few thoughts of my own. It's a continuous journey of learning, adaptation, and above all, understanding.

I'd love to see more of Alex's writing; I think he has done an excellent job sharing the Belkins approach to client management on so many tactical levels.

It's been 10 years since Alex and I started in the lead generation space, and when I take myself back to the early days, I see an inexperienced Alex who was not as refined as he is now. Those were the days when we lacked structure, process, guides, and automation; we didn't have all the technical advantages Alex has shared with you.

The three things we had were:

• We couldn't deliver poor work.
• We were always curious.
• We thought there must be a better way.

If you zoom out and look at the agency business from a broader view, all these 20+ newsletters had a thread that connects three instances:

1. KPIs
2. OKRs
3. Tactical Tasks

These are everything you need to build a successful agency. It's not about being data-driven, having lots of analytics, dashboards, or a PhD in finance; all you need to do is know who, when, and how to apply these three instances.

KPIs

Here are a couple of previous newsletters to refresh your memories on how we set up KPIs at Belkins.

#8: Sustainable Growth

#11: Next Year Planning Starts Today

Early on, you won't have as many KPIs as Belkins has, and that's okay. There should be 3, max 5 metrics that you look at on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.

A young but promising agency CEO recently told me that she feels pressure from the financial planning and forecasting full of KPIs that we implemented for her. I was confused for a second, not understanding the emotional connection to it. The way my team and I use it is like an expedition map. It determines our priorities, areas of improvement, speed, and the chances of the expedition being accomplished this year or the next. These KPIs don't tell us how to run our business, how to work with clients, or build a company culture; they tell us the blood pressure, HRV, vitamin levels, and that it's our job to figure out how to implement this data.

Company KPIs will be used later on by managers, but early on, it's a leadership job to work with them. Don't be obsessed with your metrics and have your team fear them. Instead, show how to connect KPIs to OKRs.

OKRs

These are your objectives that, by accomplishing, will help to achieve KPIs. Each time you, as a leader, look at your metrics, the first thing you should be thinking of is what objectives I can implement that will affect all, the majority, or some metrics.

A great example from previous editions could be revamping your sales compensation structure. This objective affects your new revenue (more new clients), your retention (new clients with higher retention), your COS (cost of sales), even employee NPS, hm? (more engaged salespeople).

One of the reasons why growth should be one of your core metrics is to create just enough pressure to always have new objectives. This is my answer to people who had a thought reading this: "What if we hit all our KPIs, what should be our objectives then?". Try consistent growth; every next level of growth brings a new set of challenges and objectives. This is a great segue to refer you to one of my most favorite newsletters, “lessons learned from x100 growth”.

#9: Lessons Learned from $10K to $1M MRR (X100 Growth)

Tactical tasks

Now, you are well set up to start setting up your tactical tasks to accomplish your objectives. Both OKRs and tasks, when connected well to KPIs and communicated to your team, will be accomplished with ease and support.

The worst thing is when you are asked to do something without a clear understanding if this is the best we can spend our time on. That's why many people hate so-called “corporate,” which is not in the sense they don’t want to work on things to help the company grow that maybe they are not directly paid for, but they hate not seeing the full picture.

• KPIs can be stored in a spreadsheet.
• OKRs can be recorded in Notion and shared with the team.
• Tactical tasks set up in a project management tool like Trello, Monday, or the same Notion, shared and used across the entire team.

The better the alignment between these three instances, the fewer mistakes you make.

My message to you: be nerdy about these things. They are fun and will help you acquire lots of experience. Alex is a great example of an executive who has spent his entire career navigating these waters, and he became a damn great swimmer.

More on tactical

• Like with a sales pipeline, where you have stages (appointment scheduled, services consideration, pilot, proposal discussion, closed won or lost, etc.), you should have client stages for paid clients. Split it from onboarding, adaptation, to contract resigning (retention), upselling phase, or others specific to your industry and build out playbooks for your client team per stage.

A playbook includes outlines of steps, objectives, a set of tasks, templates, examples, etc. We’ve spent years looking at paid clients more linearly, which was a mistake. Splitting it into lifecycle stages with dedicated playbooks will make both you and the client more effective in building the relationship.

• Create a complete guide for an account manager (CSM) where in the most detailed manner you break down the role.

The entire thing is over 100 pages, but it’s like a code that you can reference. It really helps to manage expectations.

More on strategic

• Think of your client team as your partners. Show the same level of trust as if they co-founded your agency with you, but at the same time, allow them to take responsibility and lead client accounts. At Belkins, we don’t believe in classical project management and client success; for the relationship to be built, you need a client partner.
• Play to the person’s strengths. Some client partners can manage and grow clients more or less technical, be better in internal project management, or upselling/cross-selling. Identify each client partner's strengths and capitalize on them. Usually, this means adapting internal processes or job descriptions.

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