Building a Better Agency with Drew McLellan of AMI
The Agency Management Institute (AMI) offers agency management training, consulting and facilitates agency owner peer networks for small to mid sized agencies (advertising, digital, marketing, media and PR).
The mission of AMI is lofty yet simple — help agency owners increase their AGI, attract better clients and employees, mitigate the risks of being self employed in a such volatile business and best of all — let the agency owner actually enjoy the perks of owning the business.
Drew is often interviewed/quoted and published in Entrepreneur Magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, AdAge, CNN, BusinessWeek, and many others. The Wall Street Journal calls him “one of 10 bloggers every entrepreneur should read.”
He is also the host of Build a Better Agency podcast.
About Drew McLellan
Drew has worked in advertising for 25+ years and started his own agency, McLellan Marketing Group in 1995 after a five-year stint at Y&R.
He also owns and runs Agency Management Institute (AMI), which offers agency management training, consulting and facilitates agency owner peer networks for small to mid sized agencies (advertising, digital, marketing, media and PR).
Show notes
We discuss 2 key problems a lot of agency owners face: (1.) they don't understand their financial metrics ('Agency Math'), and (2.) the agency owner is too entrenched in the day to day operations of the agency. AMI helps agencies solve these problems.
Here are some key ways to build a better agency:
- agency owners must move into their client's sales funnel, and begin helping their clients not only with websites and branding, but sales creation and documentation.
- after assisting with the sales funnel, the agency can go deeper into the sales funnel to: (1.) retain and delight the customer, (2.) obtain customer feedback, and (3.) upsell and add more value to the customer.
- though many agencies feel overwhelmed and want more team members, most agencies are actually overstaffed. Solving the problem involves creating better processes, not necessarily hiring more people.
- agency owners are too slow to make decisions to remove legacy clients or legacy team members that are no longer moving the agency forward.
Show links
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