DeepSpecialization_EP 100_Alyson Caffrey_Audio_Edited_V2
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[00:00:00] Alyson Caffrey: And so I know that you wanna create the system and you wanna improve it at the same time, but don't do both. Create the system, run it the obligatory amount of times, create the visibility within the data, and then tweak the things that you need to tweak down the line.
[00:00:14] Corey Quinn: Welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast, the show where we blend focus, strategy, and client intimacy in order to scale and simplify our businesses and our lives.
[00:00:24] Corey Quinn: I'm your host, Corey Quinn. Let's jump into the show. Today I am thrilled to have with us Alyson Caffrey. She's a leading agency operations strategist. She's the bestselling author of the Sabbatical Method and the founder of Operations Agency. She is absolutely amazing at streamlining backend operations. For agencies using her very powerful operations simplified framework to unlock the full potential of small teams, I am told that she is known as the wolf among her clients 'cause she simply gets things done, which I absolutely love.
[00:01:04] Corey Quinn: Alyson is deeply connected and committed to helping agencies thrive, serve their clients effectively, and build high performing teams. Alyson, welcome to the Deep Specialization Podcast.
[00:01:18] Alyson Caffrey: Corey, it is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:22] Corey Quinn: Super excited for our conversation. I can't wait to learn from you.
[00:01:25] Corey Quinn: I've been in the agency space about 18 years and I can't seem to crack the operations code, so I'm, I'm here to learn just as much as my listeners here. Before we get into all of that, what did I miss about the intro or your background or operations agency that would be relevant for our conversation?
[00:01:43] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, totally. I'm so excited to have this conversation. 'cause like we were talking about before, we press record operations is a big, scary word for a lot of agencies. Yeah. And particularly a lot of service providers. So when I cut my teeth, I was managing agency work and a lot of what we were trying to do was really implement these large, cumbersome operating systems, the EOSs and scaling ups and Clockworks of the world.
[00:02:07] Alyson Caffrey: And a lot of what I learned in growing agencies, I've been in the agency game for the last 10 years, is that what works for EOS and scaling up in some of these larger operating models doesn't necessarily apply for digital agency teams under 10. Right? And so really helping to just demystify. The scary word of operations, that means everything and nothing at the same time really.
[00:02:29] Alyson Caffrey: Simplifying delivery, estimating all of the things. So how operations touches some of the other areas of the business is super, super important. I have got two little boys at home. I'm 17 months apart, so my life is wildly chaotic and I have to solve really interesting problems all the time. So one of the things I always say is that the thing that's made me successful in operations is just being really resourceful.
[00:02:51] Alyson Caffrey: I think that we underestimate how incredibly resourceful we are and how much it benefits us to be a small business, you know, where we're not really covered in all this red tape, and then we don't have to force our entire team onto L 10 meetings every single week. And so I think embracing that season of business ownership and being able to make it work for us, make it still feel repeatable, make it still feel nice and consistent.
[00:03:15] Alyson Caffrey: That's my sweet spot and my skillset. And honestly, it's one of the things I love doing a lot.
[00:03:20] Corey Quinn: That's awesome. So, kind of diving in as it relates to operations for an agency, let's call it like a 10 person agency, who in the building owns operations? Like who is actually the one that, that, like which person is, is responsible for, let's say, owning, building, managing, you know, making operations better?
[00:03:41] Corey Quinn: Like who, who's the right person for that?
[00:03:43] Alyson Caffrey: Ooh, you're gonna hate this answer. And so is everybody listening? It's the business owner team teams of 10 and under. It's the business owner, and I think a lot of times, um, I call this operations U Point oh because I think you need to be consistently reinforcing what's important inside of the business, and that is the very first operating model so that you don't get shiny object syndrome.
[00:04:04] Alyson Caffrey: So that bunches of projects. Don't have open loops that never get closed so that you're not closing tons of different types of projects and your team is getting thrown these like really high, high fast balls every single day in the fulfillment department. I actually think a lot of like even I. What, um, you talk about Corey, like really focusing in on the specialization that you have, especially as a team of 10 and being like, listen, this is how we take on projects.
[00:04:31] Alyson Caffrey: These are the types of projects we take on. These are the types of clients that we serve. And not deviating from that. Because I think, I think it's Patrick Lencioni that writes in his book The Motive. He says, you have to be chief reminding officer to your people. Yes. And at that 10 person team, you absolutely need to be that person.
[00:04:47] Alyson Caffrey: And operations will. Absolutely fall in line at that point. So it is you. I'm not saying you can't tap your executive assistant on the shoulder to do some of those reminders, but it has to come from you. It needs to be the habits that the owner keeps.
[00:05:02] Corey Quinn: So what about those? Owners, founders who maybe are coming from a technical marketing background who maybe started the agency out of a pure love for SEO and creating amazing impact on their clients.
[00:05:16] Corey Quinn: They've started an agency, they started hiring folks to help assist with delivery. How do they, how would you recommend they start learning about maybe best practices or like where do they start when it comes to making their operations more efficient or better?
[00:05:32] Alyson Caffrey: Great question. So I'm gonna zoom out a little bit on that because I would imagine, and honestly this has been true for me over the last 10 years of serving agencies, is that 90% of agency owners start because they have a deep skillset in a particular area.
[00:05:47] Alyson Caffrey: And so we, I don't often find that there's VC firms that are like, I'm gonna start a digital agency. That's not really what happens. And so I'd imagine the majority of people listening to this are in the exact circumstances that you've just described. They're amazing at SEO and then they end up with a business.
[00:06:04] Alyson Caffrey: So when we start to move into creating operational efficiency, there are four key systems I. That every agency needs, and that's it, especially for the very beginning stages. So if you're a team under 30, focus on these four key systems and then you can make additional systems in each of the categories.
[00:06:22] Alyson Caffrey: So the four key systems every agency needs is a lead generation system. We need people who don't know about us to now know that we exist. The second is a conversion system. So if you're taking sales calls, if you're hosting workshops, if you're doing speaking, whatever that looks like, we need a way to take those people who now know who we are and make sure that they can raise their hand and say, yes, totally.
[00:06:41] Alyson Caffrey: I want the thing that you have, or I want the result that you provide. I. The third is a fulfillment system. This needs to exist for every single service that you provide. So if you're building websites and then driving traffic to those websites, you have two fulfillment systems and they need to be repeatable and they need to be ex in existence.
[00:06:56] Alyson Caffrey: The fourth key system is an improvement system, and so I usually lump the traditional operations, HR, and finance under the improvement system because all that we need to understand is are we utilizing our people? Our cash and our systems in the best way possible to bring us the best margins. And so that's it.
[00:07:15] Alyson Caffrey: I think from a management perspective, I always, always assign one person to each system. So there is no operations manager until you get to about a team of 30 most often, that really can't fit as a line item in the people picture of an agency. So then we need to ask ourselves, cool, who's running the key marketing system that's bringing us the most leads?
[00:07:36] Alyson Caffrey: Who's doing that? And who owns that system? And so the only job of that system is to make sure that it's delivering the key performance indicator that's necessary, which is high quality and a high amount leads into the agency. Does that make sense?
[00:07:51] Corey Quinn: It makes a ton of sense, and I love that. One of the four systems is lead gen.
[00:07:54] Corey Quinn: The other one is a conversion system. I don't typically think of operations extending into, uh, sales and marketing for the agency, but clearly there has to be some level of systems and operationalized approach to these. If you want consistent growth over time.
[00:08:11] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, of course. I mean, 'cause then you get into the feast or famine.
[00:08:13] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. It's the folks that go out, they chase down the business or they go do the speaking events and then they close a crap ton of clients and then they come back and they fulfill on all that stuff. They pick their head up after three months of hard work and their entire pipeline's dried up.
[00:08:26] Corey Quinn: Right, right.
[00:08:27] Corey Quinn: Which I think is, unfortunately, yeah, it's, it's more of the rule than the exception. Like that is typically back to the founder led sales. Founder led agencies as it relates to sales and marketing, they're typically referral based, right? You have the, you know, the, the agencies based on the founder's reputation in the market, right?
[00:08:45] Corey Quinn: And so how do you recommend, or what, what does a, a well-oiled lead gen system look like? I'm super curious. I
[00:08:52] Alyson Caffrey: mean, yeah, it really just needs to be about consistency. So first and foremost, it needs to be consistent. It needs to be able to be measured. So I think from, you know, referrals, let's just say for example, yeah, I was just talking about this in a community earlier.
[00:09:04] Alyson Caffrey: They were like, Allie, how do we make and operationalize referral systems? And I'm like, well, here's the deal. You should, if you mostly operate on referrals, have a list of your top referring people or people that could. Refer a business to you and just make a list of 50, a hundred people and try to touch base with them one to two times per quarter.
[00:09:23] Alyson Caffrey: It can be as simple as like, Hey, saw your LinkedIn post, love what you're doing, would love to connect, or something like that. And then my favorite, I. Which is perfect for agency owners. Get pens out. 'cause you can write this one down. Hey, I just staffed up in the fulfillment department, or I just staffed up my website team.
[00:09:39] Alyson Caffrey: Do you know anybody in your, you know, community who might need some support here? I'm trying to book my team out. Yes. Yeah. Super easy. Really benign ass. And I really think that if you can create some consistency there around how you are reaching out. So really what we need to balance is leading and lagging indicators.
[00:09:57] Alyson Caffrey: So what are you trying in order to encourage more referrals? What are you trying in order to encourage more organic, um, you know, applications on your website? And then what is the actual fruit of that? So how many leads are you actually bringing into the business? I think a lot of times we as business owners, and I've been guilty of this.
[00:10:16] Alyson Caffrey: To you do the strategy that someone else is doing, and then you don't actually measure the impact of that, whether that be the financial input, the time that you're spending, any additional resources that you're dedicating, so your team, your technology, and then all of a sudden it feels like it falls flat, but we just don't know where.
[00:10:36] Alyson Caffrey: Does that make sense? Sure, sure. So if I'm reaching out to all the client or all the referring parties. And they're like, no, I don't have anybody. The two questions I need to answer are, is it the way that I'm asking, or maybe I'm not being specific enough about the thing that I'm doing, or is that person an actual right person to be sending over referrals?
[00:10:55] Alyson Caffrey: Do they actually have a warm audience of people that I feel like I can support? And so I think there is no best marketing system. It's the one. That actually brings you in people.
[00:11:06] Corey Quinn: That's the one. So, so what, what makes it a system? I mean, you could, you could say, well, hey, I, I just listened to, I was just listening to Alyson in a, uh, networking group.
[00:11:15] Corey Quinn: She talked about doing this networking outreach with this great email program, and yeah, I'll do that, which may or may not be successful, but what, what's the difference between that and actually having a true system? Like what makes it a system?
[00:11:27] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, so systems to me are repeatable. That's it. I think whether we run it with a technology or whether we run it with a person with a process that supports it, or a multifunction, right?
[00:11:38] Alyson Caffrey: A system is basically when you can put one input in and you get another input out, and you can do that consistently. I know so many people who think that systems are adding things to a project management tool or setting automations in place, but if you've got a really great salesperson that's ready to just go knock on doors, then that's a system.
[00:11:57] Alyson Caffrey: You've trained that person and then they go out. It doesn't have to be you, and it is repeatable inside of the business. So I think anything that's repeatable, oftentimes too, what we like to say is that it guarantees result, which is somewhat kind of slippery when it comes to marketing, right? You can't reach out to 30 people and then on the first clip there for you a bunch of business,
[00:12:16] Corey Quinn: you can control the action, but not the out.
[00:12:18] Corey Quinn: Exactly
[00:12:19] Alyson Caffrey: right. Yeah, exactly. But a lot of what, like fulfillment system for example. Yeah, like, I mean, we set benchmarks with estimating and we set benchmarks with delivery, and then we typically can control, okay, this is going to be our margin, right? Sure. So a lot of other systems inside of the business, you can usually, especially when you talk about conversion systems, right?
[00:12:38] Alyson Caffrey: If you know that you're gonna convert 5% on a webinar, then you know how many people you need to get in the door to make sure that you
[00:12:45] Corey Quinn: exactly. What is, you mentioned for each of these four systems that you, it requires for this to really work, one person to own each of them. What does ownership look like?
[00:12:56] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, they're responsible for the outcome. So it's the person who is taking the sales calls. It's the person who is actually leading the webinar. I think from a fulfillment perspective, most often it's our account manager or our project manager, right? They own fulfillment. They need to liaise with all of the different facets of fulfillment.
[00:13:12] Alyson Caffrey: But I think really owning that means that they're owning the outcome. Sure. And I think generally speaking to, especially if like, let's just go back to marketing for a second. If you go back to marketing and you're like, Hey, this. System used to work, but now I'm reaching out to my referrals list and it's getting less and less frequent that people are sending stuff over to me.
[00:13:30] Alyson Caffrey: Then it's your job to figure out a different input or a different action,
[00:13:35] Corey Quinn: right? Yes. Right. So, so is there a difference between who's responsible and who does the work?
[00:13:41] Alyson Caffrey: I mean, I love the project management acronym. Um, it's super, super common racy. Yeah. Love it. And I think, for example, like, um, for me, I oftentimes find that my assistant holds some responsibility over some of the things that I'm personally accountable for inside of the business.
[00:13:56] Alyson Caffrey: Like she may go out and open those loops or, or support, but ultimately, like if we don't have enough leads that month, if that's on our scorecard and we're looking and we're like, we need 150 leads a week, I'm like, Ooh. That's me. It's not me's fault, like it's my fault. So I think the other kind of, uh, thing that we can pull back in terms of the layer of this conversation is like, if you know your inputs and you know what outputs you should be expecting, then you should be able to create a pretty interesting feedback loop that tells you when you might need to change some of the habits inside of, you know, your business.
[00:14:28] Alyson Caffrey: And that's all operations really is. It's the habits that your people keep. It's the habits that your technology keeps. Right. And just depends on how you program it.
[00:14:38] Corey Quinn: So as it relates to the conversion system, 'cause this is, this is the domain that I, I, I love and I operate in. So the, the lead gen system, that's really clear.
[00:14:46] Corey Quinn: What about the conversion system? What does that mean in your world? I.
[00:14:50] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. Conversion system is basically when we get the Yes. Right. So to me it's, it can happen in a multi, a multitude of different types of ways. However, we always need to find the one that works best for us because I think the, the thing that I think complicates agency sales is that we try to go one to many too soon.
[00:15:10] Alyson Caffrey: Or we might try to pull, um, you know, a setter or a closer in when we really haven't actually created a system out of closing business. And so that means that we need to take a look at the last 10 proposals that we closed and say, Hey, how long does it traditionally take us to take somebody from that initial call into a, yes, let's work together.
[00:15:32] Alyson Caffrey: I'm gonna sign the proposal, send the first invoice. And I think too many agencies don't understand, A, how long that takes. B, how many steps they actually need to go through in order to close the business. And then what they do. Is they think it feels simple or maybe they aren't looking at the numbers. So I've experienced, they're like, oh yeah, it takes me about 30 days to close a proposal.
[00:15:52] Alyson Caffrey: I'm like, wait a second. But when we look back at this, yeah, it feels like it's actually more like 90 days. And so I just think knowledge is power in that way. Like if you know for sure it's gonna take you 90 days, you can't drain somebody up. You can support with your systems. And so to me it's that conversion event and sometimes conversion events.
[00:16:11] Alyson Caffrey: If you're going and doing a speaking gig, you're pitching from stage, you're closing a bunch of people into your agency, that could look like a one and done type of conversion event, or most likely it's gonna be the 90 day. I'm gonna do an audit for you, I'm gonna do a proposal for you, and then we're gonna work on a retainer basis.
[00:16:28] Corey Quinn: So one of the reasons why I'm particularly enthusiastic about the conversion system that you're talking about is that a lot of agency founders that I get to work with are stuck in that founder led sales role because they, first off, they haven't specialized, so they're a generalist, which means that they're the only person in the building that actually knows what was sold.
[00:16:49] Corey Quinn: Right. And so they're.
[00:16:53] Corey Quinn: And they're not only the rainmaker, but they're also the closer and the the first step out of that is by creating a system or a process, an SOP that outlines the repeatable steps that create a predictable outcome that doesn't require the founder. And so how, how do you typically coach your clients through that piece where it's like, Hey, you have a sales process.
[00:17:18] Corey Quinn: It's mostly in your head. You think it takes 30 days, it takes 90 days. Like how do you get it out of them?
[00:17:24] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, totally. Well, first we have to plant the flag, right? It's like if you wanna lose 30 pounds, you gotta step on the scale first. We have to figure out exactly where we are. I think Headspace wise, like when I'm actually coaching with clients most often what I tell them is that we don't need our sales process to be shorter.
[00:17:41] Alyson Caffrey: I. We don't, we don't need it to be shorter. We just need to know what it's, and I think a lot of times when we try to operationalize something, when we really try to create a system out of it, we might not know how long it takes us. We also most often try to shorten it. And so we'll take shortcuts for how long we want it to be versus how long it actually is.
[00:18:01] Alyson Caffrey: And so when we're creating the collateral, when we're creating the templates, when we're creating the scripts or the reach outs or any of those. Things we then say, oh, I just need a 30 day email sequence, or whatever that looks like. But if you go back in the history, you actually have sent way more. So I always tell my folks, don't try to create a system and improve a system at the same time.
[00:18:22] Alyson Caffrey: Because ultimately, if you need a 90 day closed process, and you know that in your operating model, we just make other decisions in the business to support a longer sales cycle. And I actually think that. Is one of the most freeing things in the agency world is just knowing. Just knowing that when somebody comes into your world and they fill out that initial form on your website, because they know they want to work with you, we know that we can project that revenue.
[00:18:51] Alyson Caffrey: You know, 180 days in advance depending on how your pricing model looks like, right? And so I know that you wanna create the system and you wanna improve it at the same time, but don't do both. Create the system, run it the obligatory amount of times, create the visibility within the data, and then tweak the things that you need to tweak down the line.
[00:19:10] Corey Quinn: I think what you're addressing is, is super interesting that the founder who's ever responsible for creating the the SOP or the process. They are trying to optimize it at the same point. You're right, right. Versus just looking at reality and kind of using that as the basis of, okay, well this is where we are today.
[00:19:27] Corey Quinn: This is the data that we have. Why do you think we do that as, as humans? Like why? Why does that happen?
[00:19:32] Alyson Caffrey: Corey? We're visionaries. I mean, listen, if you start a business, you have to believe that something exists that currently doesn't right now. And so I see it all the time. I mean, I'm guilty of this all the time.
[00:19:42] Alyson Caffrey: I'll see something within my team, or I'll see a skillset that somebody has that I'm like, this is my vision for your role, and it'll take two years. To professionally develop them into the thing that I saw. And so I think as founders we're so guilty of this because we actually can see the vision of an optimized sales process we just overlook.
[00:20:02] Alyson Caffrey: It's like that montage. We want the montage of the work that needs to get put in to go and do the thing. But instead, the montage is actually like a year worth of work. And tweaking and refining and training the team and speaking life into your people to give them the confidence that it actually takes to show up like you do on a call or in a presentation or any of those things.
[00:20:22] Alyson Caffrey: And so I think that as people, we see this bigger vision for what could be possible, and it ends up hamstring us because then we try to do too much at the same time.
[00:20:33] Corey Quinn: Absolutely. I'd love to talk more about your fulfillment system. What does that look like? You mentioned there's two parts to it.
[00:20:40] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, so most often fulfillment systems, like the simplest way I can describe it is, are we fulfilling on the promises that we're making in the sales process?
[00:20:49] Alyson Caffrey: So the big first part of the sales system is making sure that sales to fulfillment pass off is really clean. Because to your point earlier, Corey, sometimes if you're still in the founder-led sales seat, but maybe you have worked yourself out of fulfillment because that really is your genius and you've been able to train people and see really great skill sets and build a team of.
[00:21:07] Alyson Caffrey: Folks on your fulfillment side, most often what will happen is that baton pass between sales and fulfillment gets a little bit botched. Um, so we talk about that, you know, formally in agencies around estimating and scoping work, right? Making sure that we really fully understand after a proposal is signed or maybe even a first invoice is, you know, passed through that we're really, really understanding exactly what is going on in the project.
[00:21:30] Alyson Caffrey: And then the second. It's creating a library of repeatable things that we're doing. So usually it's, um, a standard book of business. You know, we build websites, we do it in this, you know, in this form we do it on this, uh, platform, you know, whatever that looks like. We run traffic in this way. We do organic in this way.
[00:21:47] Alyson Caffrey: So I think generally speaking, having that first, like the pass off, the estimating in the scoping piece really, really tight, and then having a list of really solid, repeatable fulfillment SOPs. So standards of operating. Around how you guys deliver on your core services? You know, I think generally speaking, that needs to exist for all of the services that you have.
[00:22:08] Alyson Caffrey: Um, I'm a fan of, less is more when it comes to agency work, although I have worked with my fair share of full stacks. I think less is more. So the more you can get into those details and. Okay, great. If I'm offering five different services right now, which is the most profitable for us? Or which two are the most profitable or the most frequented?
[00:22:25] Alyson Caffrey: Sure. And then really just leaning all resources into operationally those two services. 'cause at the end of the day, the fulfillment system is the same as any of the others, right? We wanna put something in and we wanna get something out, right? We wanna put in new business and exciting projects, and we wanna get out profit that we can reinvest into the growth of our business, or dare I say, put in.
[00:22:46] Corey Quinn: Yes, please. So what do you say to those founders who object to creating a library around standard procedures around the, you know, we, we, we have a creative process that we don't want to pull the magic out by making it sort of rote and repeatable. Like, how, how do you wrestle with that?
[00:23:05] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, I'm a big fan that processes actually don't restrict our creativity.
[00:23:10] Alyson Caffrey: They actually allow more. And the reason I say that is because I actually believe that, you know, after years of working with creatives and creative, um, functions inside of agencies, that a lot of times the creative departments can't be as creative as they want to be because. Baseline, things around the project are falling through the cracks, right?
[00:23:28] Alyson Caffrey: Whether that be the timeline on the deliverables, I mean, it's not fun also to be put up against a timeline to think of your most creative idea either, right? Yeah. Right. So I think the pressure is really real for some of these creative teams where when things start to fall through the cracks, right?
[00:23:43] Alyson Caffrey: Maybe that's on the timeline, or the strategy isn't communicated clearly, they're then. Under this really restrictive timeline to be able to produce some of those things. So I think generally speaking, if you're wondering for a creative department where to start first, it's the administrative details of the project.
[00:24:00] Alyson Caffrey: Tighten those weaves on the basket so that nothing falls through the cracks. Yeah. And then you feel like you've got a really nice open and comfortable space to play. I actually don't think. Putting a ton of parameters on the creative process is necessary. I think good people know how to do good work. I think it's really the administrative side of things where we get a day's notice to do something that is an operational issue.
[00:24:25] Corey Quinn: Right, right. Not a creativity issue. What is your take on time tracking?
[00:24:29] Alyson Caffrey: Oh, you have to time track. You do, and you know, everybody hates when I say this, but at the end of the day, we need to figure out if we're in the business of agency work, we're basically in the business of labor cost. I mean, that's just how it works.
[00:24:43] Alyson Caffrey: And so I really don't think there's any way around it. I have personally played with several different pricing structures, and I think value-based pricing is one of the ways that we could get out of a ton of cumbersome time tracking, especially if you have. People who are on retainer or doing a certain amount of hours toward a project and you're like, Hey listen, as long as we don't go over this, I know my price is this, so I'm gonna make X amount of dollars.
[00:25:06] Alyson Caffrey: That's the only way I've really found that that will work. But I think it does shoot us in the foot a little bit behind the scenes because if we're wondering, you know, where our margins are and why, you know, we're not as profitable as we want to be, or we wanna move the marker in another direction, that kind of general value-based pricing.
[00:25:23] Alyson Caffrey: Won't really show us where we need to work on the business or who needs to get better. It's really just, you know, a, you know, a really quick formula to profitability. So I think time tracking is gonna be really helpful, both for agency projects, generally speaking, but also for the founder as the business evolves.
[00:25:39] Alyson Caffrey: It's always good to have that data behind the scenes.
[00:25:41] Corey Quinn: Yeah, it's a core metric I think, of success and something, but how, how do you, how would you coach an agency founder who. Is realizing that they would tremendously benefit from time tracking, but is nervous about how the team is going to take the news that, hey, it's time to start time tracking.
[00:25:59] Corey Quinn: Like how do, how do you recommend they approach that conversation? Yeah,
[00:26:02] Alyson Caffrey: I mean, honestly Corey, it goes back to that very, very first comment of the operations. You point out like, I've seen so many agency founders who tried to implement time tracking, but are. Unwilling to do it themselves, or they come in and out of doing the time tracking.
[00:26:16] Alyson Caffrey: They'll do it one week and then they'll fall off and then they'll do it another week. You need to lead your team by example, and if you say this is an important thing that they all need to be tracking, you need to lead. And so a lot of times what I'll say to my agency founders is I'll be like, Hey, if you feel like this is something that you're not currently doing that you really wanna do, maybe you take two weeks and do a time study like fully on your own.
[00:26:37] Alyson Caffrey: Come back with the insights and ahas. Tell your team, Hey listen, this is what I found out from my time study, and I think it could be really impactful. And they literally see you doing the work and you tell them like, it's not gonna be easy, but this is a habit that you can build over the next couple of weeks.
[00:26:51] Alyson Caffrey: And it's really critical to the agency. I've also seen a lot of success with compensation or some kind of upside metric for the team. So like if we can spend X amount less dollars on all of these projects, like we will go do something cool together in town, or I can, you know, budget in gifts and things like that for the team.
[00:27:10] Alyson Caffrey: So incentivize them too, especially as they're building the habit, because it is, I mean, anybody who's ever time tracked, you have to build the muscle. You have to. Right? And if you don't, it's gonna feel like you're reinventing the wheel every single time.
[00:27:22] Corey Quinn: So best practices who, who's the best or the right person to own the client relationship?
[00:27:28] Corey Quinn: Is it the salesperson? Is it the an account manager, or is it the person who is responsible for doing the fulfillment
[00:27:36] Alyson Caffrey: account manager? Easy, easy answer. Yeah. I think here's the thing about account management. We're in the business of relationships. Yeah. And I think the sales person is responsible for that system that we talked about before.
[00:27:49] Alyson Caffrey: They're not the conversion system. They're not responsible for the fulfillment system. So I think when we start to talk about passing the baton, we need to really be, again, that's why my first part of my fulfillment system was that pass off is because we need to, whether it's founder led sales, whether it's a sales person who's closing on them.
[00:28:07] Alyson Caffrey: Agency's behalf. We need to, without a shadow of a doubt, be like, I've handled the relationship to this point and you've got an incredible person in Allie. She's gonna be your account manager and she's gonna walk you through the rest of your website build, and I'm so excited. Let me know if you have any questions that I'm not saying that that person can't check in on how they're doing because they've built the relationship.
[00:28:27] Alyson Caffrey: They can't be like, Hey, I heard that you guys got version one, or you guys approved your wire frame. How are you feeling like those types of like check-ins? I fully encourage. Sure. However, on the back end of the business, account managers should be the accountable party for how projects go. Doesn't mean that they're responsible for every single thing, doesn't mean that they're not gonna tap the SEO team on the shoulder to be like, Hey, can you please explain keyword 1 0 1 to me to make sure that we're doing okay?
[00:28:52] Alyson Caffrey: But generally speaking, I think the client needs to have a person, you know, who is dedicated to their account, and salespeople need to be selling. They don't. Really need to be behind the scenes of, you know, the nitty gritty details of a project.
[00:29:04] Corey Quinn: I'm reminded of one of my clients who believes that their, their approach to strategy is one of their USPS or unique selling propositions, and that they have either the founder or like the chief strategist involved in the sales process is the client comes on.
[00:29:23] Corey Quinn: The client experiences, let's say someone, an account manager who may be great, but otherwise not an excellent strategist, and there's a disconnect there for clients. How do you bridge that gap, you know? Is that clear what I'm saying? Yeah. I think this is
[00:29:36] Alyson Caffrey: an excellent question, transparently, and I've faced this in my own business.
[00:29:40] Alyson Caffrey: So I'm gonna tell my story because operations agency is an agency for years with our projects with operations agency, I would do the same thing. I would lead the audits, I would lead the strategy. I would say, Hey, listen, this is what the project looks like, and here are the operational elements that we absolutely need to improve of the business.
[00:29:56] Alyson Caffrey: And I would whiteboard out a three month or a six month project, and then I hand it over to my team. In the beginning stages of this, I was their contact person, so I would be like on the calls with them, I would be sending the updates, I'd be doing all the things, but then Lauren, my account director, would be managing all the delivery behind the scenes.
[00:30:14] Alyson Caffrey: And when we stopped having me on calls, I. Ongoing calls. So like those three month, six month calls, our retention rate skyrocketed to 90%. Wow, nine zero. And here's the reason why Corey, and this is true for all of the agencies that I've also worked with, is that you don't often need to reinvent the wheel every single month On strategy.
[00:30:35] Alyson Caffrey: The strategy is the strategy. What we need to now do and what agencies do best is help with implementation. Of the strategy that is set out. I firmly believe that a lot of founders that get super involved in, you know, the projects that they're delivering for clients, they end up either reinventing the wheel on strategy or adding additional caveats 'cause they can't help themselves.
[00:30:57] Alyson Caffrey: Right, right. Or the clients asking. Exactly. Yeah. And it becomes this thing where then yes, you're overdelivering or you're going out of scope or some of those things. I believe that there's a time for strategy and I think re and you know, revisit it every 90 days with your clients. I don't think that you don't have a role in the continuing relationship with your client and their marketing strategy, but make sure that that feels strategic.
[00:31:19] Alyson Caffrey: Because if you're on calls every week or every month, or every other week, whatever the cadence looks like with your clients, you're not gonna be able to help yourself. But speak into strategy or like. Talk about something that you're really excited about. It's just in us and we shouldn't be taking our clients' eyes off the prize or the main reason that they signed that proposal and hired us.
[00:31:38] Alyson Caffrey: Leave that to the team.
[00:31:40] Corey Quinn: So instead, just come in at the normal resets. Let's say you're at, at the end of the six month strategy. Okay, what's the next six months? Come in.
[00:31:46] Alyson Caffrey: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:46] Corey Quinn: Right? When it comes to those agencies that have multiple products, and they may be brought in, bring in clients on one product, but there's an opportunity to upsell down the road.
[00:31:56] Corey Quinn: Who is the best person in the agency to do that upsell? Should the salesperson come back in and, and try and get the, uh, greater commitment? Or is it the account manager or some hybrid approach of the, of the two?
[00:32:06] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. I think it depends on the acumen of the account managers. Ideally. I think it would be perfect for an account manager to do that.
[00:32:13] Alyson Caffrey: Hey, listen, we've been managing this project, saw a gap here, and we can easily support you in that, you know? Does that sound good? Yeah. Like it could be that benign of an ask, and I think if you're in a position where they're like, Hey, listen, let's go in and strategize, then the account manager, if they don't feel comfortable in strategy or leading something like that, they could be like, Hey, listen, I'm really excited to discuss bolting this on to your current, you know, package with us.
[00:32:36] Alyson Caffrey: And I'm gonna bring in Corey because he knows a little bit more about how, you know, the strategy piece might work there. So it could totally be a tag team.
[00:32:45] Corey Quinn: Yeah, it's interesting every, every perspective that you have. Interesting. I think interestingly aligns with my time at Scorpion, which was originally a hundred person agency.
[00:32:55] Corey Quinn: We grew with a thousand, and in the case of sales, the sales are responsible for getting the contract. That's, it gets handed off to effectively an account manager who is not the people who are doing the SEO and the web design and all that stuff. And certainly upsells were owned by them. The challenge that we had was that.
[00:33:11] Corey Quinn: A lot of the account managers who were responsible and, and, and compensated on not only retention, but also upsells, is that a lot of 'em felt uncomfortable with that type of conversation. Totally. Because, you know, there's a, there's potentially a negative stigma out there about sales when in reality, you know, we know, I'm sure that you were just presenting ways to have greater impact on our clients and add more value.
[00:33:36] Corey Quinn: What we ended up doing was we had some of our sales training resources come into the account managers and really help them, give them some tools and frameworks about how to have that conversation so that their, their fears were lessened or alleviated because they now had a tool set and how to approach this conversation.
[00:33:56] Corey Quinn: How to do the upsell in a way that is supportive of the relationship that they've built.
[00:34:01] Alyson Caffrey: I love that. And you know, I think if we all believe that sales is service and your account managers believe that you guys are doing excellent work, just continue to reinforce that. Yeah. If they don't feel comfortable having the conversation, even just being able to identify new revenue opportunities is the first step.
[00:34:17] Alyson Caffrey: So what we do most often with our agency clients is established that. Internal client meeting where you go over the book of business and the health of the clients and then their account manager can say, Hey, listen, these folks are two months away from our initial, like, you know, hitting the strategy of the initial 90 day engagement, and I think they'd be perfect for X, let's.
[00:34:37] Alyson Caffrey: Have a conversation and then they can knowingly pass that off or whatever that looks like. 'cause I agree with you. I think really it comes down to maintaining the relationship and their relationship has been one of service, not sales, but sales is service
[00:34:53] Corey Quinn: true. Right? It's, it's, uh, it would be potentially.
[00:34:57] Corey Quinn: By not extending additional value to the client, you're not giving them the opportunity to, to, you know, grow even greater, whatever that is in that context. So I think that's the right frame to approach it with. Those folks who maybe are less comfortable with sales, maybe they went into account management 'cause they didn't like sales, right?
[00:35:14] Corey Quinn: They chose, they chose a different path. So being able to address that I think is really important. Let's jump into the improvement system. You mentioned it briefly. Tell us what that is and how it works.
[00:35:26] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, so improvement system basically means are the measurables of the agency. So timeline of projects in the door, out the door, getting better.
[00:35:35] Alyson Caffrey: Is the way that we use our finances getting better, right? Are our margins improving and are the ways that we're supporting and professionally developing our people getting better? And so the reason I lump all of that together is because most often when I work with an agency team, 10 under, even 30 under, they don't have like a formal finance department.
[00:35:55] Alyson Caffrey: They're probably using a fractional CFO or an accounting firm. They probably also don't have a formal HR function. Most of their managers are most likely the people who are, you know. In the forefront of managing the people operations piece. And so I put that all together because if you can create some key performance indicators around the agency, making sure that, you know, our projects are on time and on budget, right?
[00:36:18] Alyson Caffrey: That's one of the biggest, you know, first things that you can measure and improve. And also too, our, our people meeting our delivery standards, you know, and the, the standards of our systems. So I talked earlier about, you know, marketing input, um, you know, or lead input from our marketing system and sales input from our.
[00:36:35] Alyson Caffrey: System and, and all of those things and delivery, those all likely have metrics and they're all part of our improvement system. And so I often find that improvement systems are most easily explained by the metrics that run the business. So what should be true when we know that we're doing things really well, and if they're not true?
[00:36:53] Alyson Caffrey: Do we have a way of improving them? So is it clarifying on the process, pulling somebody in for a training, adding in a new piece of technology that doesn't completely overhaul what we are doing as an agency? Right. Because I think a lot of agency owners are like, well, if I put in a new project management system, or if I hire a new account manager and have to make their training, it's gonna completely derail.
[00:37:17] Alyson Caffrey: Every other thing that we're doing at the agency and it's gonna require a ton of my time. What we want to do is create the improvement system so that it can be humming in the background. And honestly, for a lot of agencies, this is so helpful. We did this with an agency a couple of years ago. They did a ton of SEO work and I said, I was like, what if we decided that the improvement system was not only going to support the team and how they behaved inside of the business, how we could make decisions as a leadership team, but also.
[00:37:45] Alyson Caffrey: Part of it is resurfacing some of these wins and the success stories that you guys are getting for your clients into your marketing. So it's a really, really great way too to formalize that feedback loop into the other areas of the business. 'cause I see agencies too often see. Separating between the growth side and the fulfillment side of the business, right?
[00:38:04] Alyson Caffrey: And they most often don't talk to each other in meaningful ways. So if we think about the flow of our operations as going through, write the client experience, so they become a lead. They go through our conversion process, they get great results with us as a client. We say, Hey, listen, what did you love and how can we improve?
[00:38:20] Alyson Caffrey: That just filters right back in. The improvement side goes backend operations. The love goes into the marketing.
[00:38:26] Corey Quinn: Sure. You mentioned earlier about this concept of leading and lagging indicators. Could you just share with the audience what is, what are the, what's the difference between a leading and a lagging indicator?
[00:38:36] Alyson Caffrey: Ooh, love it. So a very firm example is like cold sales calls to close business leading cold sales calls, lagging close business, right? So I think generally speaking, we often will look at the lagging indicators as the source of truth, which is great. Right? Yeah, that's, that's. Better than nothing. And then what happens is we start to ask ourselves, well hey, the focus is to grow revenue and we want revenue to be at this place.
[00:38:57] Alyson Caffrey: And we have no data to support. Like, why that isn't true, right? We have no idea. And so I think lagging indicators are fantastic, but leading indicators actually tell us day to day what habits we can change in the business in order to improve our lagging indicators. So let's just say for example, right, the goal is to do 10, you know, cold calls a day.
[00:39:18] Alyson Caffrey: And that should produce us at least one new client, you know, into the agency. Let's just like make that kind of assumption. If somebody only did their eight cold calls and then we saw that no new business was closed, we would know. Oh wow. Okay. We know that at least 10 to one, right? And so you absolutely need to do your 10.
[00:39:34] Alyson Caffrey: That's a person problem. If we're doing our 10 sales calls and then we aren't closing R one, that might be a process problem. Or it might be a person problem. We need to kind of like unpack that a little bit more. And so I think when we can have those two bookends of like what is the input and then what is the expected output, we can kind of figure out, you know, if the inputs are actually helpful and we can change these all the time.
[00:39:55] Alyson Caffrey: We don't have to wait for our p and l to come in. We don't have to wait for all of the financial metrics to be updated or any of that stuff. We can literally say, okay, now. I need to make 15 sales calls to make one call. I can do those 15 today, like this afternoon. Right, right. And that feels like a really real time way to start to improve your operations and especially your inputs and your output.
[00:40:15] Alyson Caffrey: So I always say leading indicators are the habits and lagging indicators are the results.
[00:40:20] Corey Quinn: I love that. So as a, as a founder maybe listening to this conversation, who is thinking about how to apply these four systems to their agency, how do you help coach these agency founders to. Approach, delegation, maybe something that they struggle with.
[00:40:39] Corey Quinn: Certainly as a founder and as a leader in an organization, I have probably, this is definitely true for the founder. I've got the most skin in the game for success. And so I really want things to go to plan above, you know, meet and exceed expectations. And so in situations where you have founders who are maybe struggling with delegation, how do you kind of coach them through that?
[00:41:04] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. You know, Corey, I think oftentimes I'm a mom of two boys. I think about delegating certain things in the business, like leaving my kids in the care of a stranger, right? And I think we forget about that stuff because it is as emotionally challenging. I. Like, I want to just acknowledge that it is as emotionally challenging, especially big parts of the business, like the revenue operations, you know, sitting on calls with prospects, like that's a big thing to offload and it's as if I did no research on a daycare center and I went and dropped my two boys off.
[00:41:35] Alyson Caffrey: Like that would feel really nerve wracking to me, right? So think about it and reverse engineer it. Like if I were to go leave my child or something that I care about a lot. With somebody else that maybe, I don't know, what would I do? Right? I'd first vet them, make sure that they have the basic skillset, the basic requirements, the basic certifications that are necessary to care for my boys based on the standard that I personally feel comfortable with.
[00:41:57] Alyson Caffrey: I would also likely pilot, I'd go to an onsite, I would take a look at the facilities. I would meet to the teachers, right? So that might look like you jumping on a few sales calls with them, right? Taking a look at how they're actually approaching the conversation, making sure that that feels really good to you.
[00:42:13] Alyson Caffrey: And then first, and then finally is like actually identifying like what the standard of care actually looks like and making sure that you can co-create that with somebody. Because I think a lot of times when we leave something in the business to somebody else, and, and I say this with so much love. We haven't exactly defined what we want out of the situation or what the rules of engagement actually are or the rules of care actually are.
[00:42:36] Alyson Caffrey: And so we're expecting somebody to come in, read our mind through osmosis and perform better than we're performing. They have an impossible job. It's impossible.
[00:42:44] Corey Quinn: Right, right. I was having this conversation today. Literally.
[00:42:49] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, it's so common. And I mean it's the same with fulfillment. Like we might have years of SEO experience and then we hire somebody to come in and to support us, and then we expect them to just understand with 10 years of context, 20 years of context.
[00:43:00] Alyson Caffrey: And that's just not gonna be possible. So I think first and foremost, defining like what that looks like. So what does delegation actually look like? And I always wanna level set with my founders is. It's not gonna happen a hundred percent of the time. The first time it won't. And I think the only thing that we can really guarantee is that we can be as clear as humanly possible about what we expect, and then just try to move the goalpost a little bit farther over a consistent period of time.
[00:43:29] Alyson Caffrey: I'd rather have a person on my team who is dedicated to improvement versus nails it on the first try and then falls off and back into the weeds of things, right? I'd rather rather have that person supporting me.
[00:43:43] Corey Quinn: No, I'm reminded of Dan Martel, his, his, uh, his words a definition of done, right? Yes. So, like, you know, being really clear, being able to articulate what done looks like versus just assume, of course, assuming that people understand through osmosis leads to disappointment, and in many cases, churned employees because they're just not meeting expectations when the reality is, is that.
[00:44:05] Corey Quinn: Potentially we're so, so.
[00:44:14] Corey Quinn: Let's call it a lightning round around ai. Obviously AI is coming on strong. It's continuing to get more and more pervasive in the world of agency operations.
[00:44:24] Alyson Caffrey: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:24] Corey Quinn: What are some, what's some advice as it relates to agencies and how they should be thinking about AI to improve the operations and the experience of, of their agency?
[00:44:34] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah. So I think operationally speaking, AI is very, very similar to operational structure in general. It needs to be used as a facet of every single piece of the business. So from the marketing to the sales to the fulfillment to the improvement, we should be using it pretty much everywhere. It needs to either be like.
[00:44:54] Alyson Caffrey: Treated as a dedicated full-time person, so it needs to have a particular role, or it needs to be really clear how every single role in the agency is to use AI to further their key performance indicators and basically be better at their job. I. I think folks who are resistant to that, uh, particularly I think in creative, I think in copy, right?
[00:45:15] Alyson Caffrey: Those types of things. Generally speaking, it's an input and output game similar to every other thing that we do inside of the business. We have this at our fingertips. We should be using it and we should be really supporting our teams to get in, train their own ais. A lot of the companies that we work with actually have their employees.
[00:45:35] Alyson Caffrey: Pay for their own ais so that they can train them on how they do their work. I told my team, I was like, upload your job description. Ask the AI how you can do things faster. Oh, so interesting. It was so amazing. Honestly, some of the feedback that we got was Epic. Like we had a whole session about it. And honestly, I really do think embracing it as part of agency life is gonna be really important.
[00:45:57] Alyson Caffrey: And I think anyone who's resisting. To, it may just be operating a little bit out of fear. So as the founder, like sit down with those people, try to understand where that fear is coming from. Reassure and reinforce that you know their job is safe and that they are in a position where maybe we might be able to double our client load if we use it correctly.
[00:46:20] Alyson Caffrey: Right. Nobody's job needs to go anywhere, but you might be able to handle 30 projects instead of 15. Right? Like that's amazing for everybody involved. And I think, um, just making sure that you're really clear on how it's being used inside of the business is gonna be really important.
[00:46:35] Corey Quinn: Solid advice. So, I've got one last question for you.
[00:46:39] Corey Quinn: What's your motivation?
[00:46:41] Alyson Caffrey: Oh, my motivation, honestly, I love being with my family. I love spending quality time with them, and I think my motivation is presence. I love being able to have, operationally speaking things taken care around me so that I can, I. Be here when I'm here so that I can be with my kids when I'm with my kids.
[00:47:05] Alyson Caffrey: That's one of the biggest things that operations has afforded me. And one of the things I'm really, really excited to provide to the people that walk through the doors of operations agency, um, my personal brand, anybody that I've worked directly with is just to help them be where they are and not be thinking about the laundry list of things that might be falling through the cracks in the business or in your personal life or any of those things.
[00:47:25] Alyson Caffrey: Just being able to be. Exactly where you are. So I think my motivation is presence, like just being present with the people that I'm actually with.
[00:47:34] Corey Quinn: Well, thank you for your presence on this episode because you've dropped so much value. I've learned a lot. You see me, you're not watching the video. You, uh, I'm taking a ton of notes here, so, so much wisdom.
[00:47:46] Corey Quinn: Thank you, Alyson. Really, really appreciate it.
[00:47:48] Alyson Caffrey: Thanks Corey. I
[00:47:48] Corey Quinn: had a
[00:47:49] Alyson Caffrey: blast. Thank you for having
[00:47:50] Corey Quinn: me. Yeah. Where can people reach out to learn more about you and, uh, get in touch?
[00:47:55] Alyson Caffrey: Yeah, of course. Um, honestly, alison Caffrey.com. I'm super straightforward. Um, all my consulting and all of our operational projects go through there.
[00:48:02] Alyson Caffrey: I'm also really active, um, on Instagram, so at Ally Caffrey is the best place probably to get in touch with me. I also answer all of my dms, which is uncommon, I feel like, in our space. So connect with me. Let me know what you resonated with. Um, if you're struggling with anything, I'd be happy to help.
[00:48:17] Corey Quinn: Awesome.
[00:48:17] Corey Quinn: Thanks so much. Thanks, Corey. Thanks for tuning in to the Deep Specialization Podcast. If you haven't checked out my bestselling book, anyone, not everyone, you can download the audiobook for free right now by going to anyone, not everyone.com. That's anyone, not everyone.com. And finally, a special thank you to our sponsor, E two M.
[00:48:40] Corey Quinn: We'll see you in the next episode.
